Fire at the cathedral rectory on Farmington Avenue

1. A woman on the fourth floor had been dressing in her room; she bolted from the rectory because of the imminent threat of suffocation.
2. The priests began to quickly remove “the most valuable articles” from the rectory.
3. By the time the firefighters arrived, smoke was coming out of the windows of the rectory.

1. Firefighters ran a line of hose into the basement, where the fire was located.
2. The fire ran up the east side of the building from the boiler room, working its way up from the basement via the lathing and partitions. the lathing.
3. On the first floor, firefighters tore down the plaster and lath in the northeast room in order to extinguish the fire spreading via the partitions.
4. On the second floor, smoke began “curling up the edges of the carpet on the floor of the second story hallway.”
5. Firefighters chopped away the wainscoting in order to gain access for fire extinguishers to pour water on the flames.

• The fire extinguishers proved inadequate, and a line of hose was carried up the main staircase.
• The firefighters checked the fire in this area.
• They also demolished a “water closet” above the northeast room and punched a hole in the second-floor chimney flue.

6. On the third floor, they carried a hose to fight the fire spreading via the partitions.

• They demolished “another closet” to get water into the partition.

7. It took an hour to put the fire out fully.

1. James Hughes surveyed the building but was unable to provide an estimate of the damage.
2. “Messrs. McCray and Clark were at the fire but were uncertain as to whether they held insurance on the building.”

1. The total loss was estimated to be about $6,000.
2. The joists over the boiler room in the basement were “burned over and badly charred,” and some pipes and boiler connections were a total loss.
3. There were several inches of water in the basement, which was the only place the firefighters used their hos at full strength.
4. Upstairs, furniture and carpet were ruined, and a good deal of plaster had been pulled down from the walls.
5. No water ran through the walls or disfigured the walls.
6. Damage was generally confined to a small section of the rectory, along the east side and in particular in and above the northeast room on the first floor.

1. At some point after the fire, it was discovered that the bricks that formed the two sides of the chimney flue on the second floor were offset by approximately two inches and did not, as a consequence, meet at the corner.
2. That two-inch space had been filled with a strip of wood that had been plastered into place.
3. The flue led directly to an open fireplace on the first floor, which could have led to a fire through normal use of the fireplace.

Neither Lawrence McMahon nor William A. Harty were in town today.

1. So, it was a “water closet” on the second floor and “another closet” on the third floor. Although the article doesn’t say so directly, both context and proximity imply that the “other closet” was also a bathroom.
2. McCray was probably William B. McCray, who worked for Kimball & McCray and was prominent in fire insurance.
3. Clark was probably William B. Clark, who was president of Aetna Fire.

The Courant used the firefighters’ discovery about the misaligned second-floor flue to lobby for the creation of a full-time building inspector in Hartford.

1. The Courant described the rectory as the “residence of Bishop McMahon on Farmington Avenue,” but there were clearly numerous other people living there. These included several priests, among whom were Thomas Nealon and likely James Hughes, and at least three women who worked for the parish.
2. The furnace heating the rectory was a Gould’s Patent, which provided “steam heat by indirect radiation.”
3. “Father Nealon rang in the alarm, which was the first ever sent in from the new box, No. 621, at the cathedral.”

1. “The fire department was on hand promptly, and but little confusion was caused by the triple number of the new box.”
2. “Father Harty, who has charge of the insurance papers, was out of town yesterday, and the papers are in his safe. The details of the insurance cannot, therefore, be learned until his return today.”
3. “The firemen deserve credit for not throwing any more water on the upper floors than was absolutely necessary.”
4. “The need of more policemen was also demonstrated. Two or three men cannot guard a large building inside and out, where there is so much property in danger of thieves as well as fire.”

1. Today, the damage would have been estimated at $206,734.95.
2. Lawrence McMahon was the Bishop of Hartford.
3. William A. Harty was the rector of Saint Joseph’s parish.
4. Thomas A. R. Nelson was a parish priest at the Cathedral of Saint Joseph.
5. Both William B. Clark and William B. McCray lived on Asylum Hill: Clark at 286 Farmington Avenue, and McCray at 44 Gillett Street.

Unattributed.  “A fire well managed,” Hartford Courant, December 11, 1890, page 1.