What Came Before the Laurel

There Was a Fire Thirty Years Ago

Walnut street on a tough day.

"On the morning of Dec. 14, 1994, a fire broke out at 1913 Walnut Street. Before it was over, six alarms had been sounded, the building - a pleasant 1897 brownstone with several commercial tenants - had been destroyed, and the neighboring buildings, including the Eric Theater, had been damaged." 

That's from an article I wrote that appeared in the January 25, 1995, edition of the Welcomat (pp. 31-32). The Welcomat later became the Philadelphia Weekly. The switch was the right thing to do, but a tiny part of me misses that marvelously idiosyncratic name.

Most of the article is a critique of the coverage provided by the Inquirer and the Daily News, and I confess that I probably hadn't given a thought to it for several decades. Then, one day last year, I was looking at old 35 millimeter slides - digitizing some of my Kodachromes is, by this point, a multiyear project - and I picked up yet another little yellow box. On this one I had written "december 1994 walnut street fire." What fire, I thought.

As I went through the slides in the box, it slowly came back to me, and I also remembered the Welcomat story. It took me a while to find it (it was mouldering in the basement).

The slides have never been published. I think they tell the story. Great art? No. But decent documentary work, in my opinion.

The photo at the beginning of this article was as close as I could get to the fire on Walnut Street. The fire department had very properly properly closed off the block, and I didn't have press credentials. You can see the Eric Rittenhouse sign on the right. I'm standing on Walnut just west of 19th street.

Here's another shot of Walnut, from the 20th street side. The firefighters are squirting into 1913 Walnut, the source of the fire. Note the firefighter on the roof. The movie theater is the white building to the right of 1913.

The firefighters used a lot of water. Here's where all that water comes from - first a hydrant, then a pumper. This pumper is on Walnut just west of 20th, with the back of the Rittenhouse building visible across the parking lot that's just behind the Church of the Holy Trinity. 

(There are two steam vents in the sidewalk here. I think the white cloud is just steam. Steam clouds on the sidewalk used to be fairly common,)

Here's another pumper, on 20th just south of Moravian.

Much of the fire-fighting actually took place on the Sansom street side, with equipment marshaled in the large parking lot at 20th and Sansom. This lot is now occupied by a relatively low-rise building that is part of the Laurel complex.

On a good day, the commanders at the fire scene coordinate the various vectors of approach so the firefighters don't, for instance, squirt too much water on one another. Not every day is excellent, but then that's one of the reasons firefighters wear raincoats.

Here's a shot down Moravian, looking west from 19th.

And yes, there was a lot of smoke. Going over these slides, I regularly found myself getting disoriented. I can only imagine what it's like to stand in thick smoke on the roof of a burning building.

I think maintaining situational awareness in a situation like this must be very difficult.

And above all remembering to make sure you know where your comrades are. This is dangerous, difficult work.

Rittenhouse Square - note the Church of the Holy Trinity in the background. 

Why are these men smiling? They have been in peril, and now they're out of it, and they're elated.

So that's the back story for the enormous, and may I say very attractive building that has finally succeeded the Eric Rittenhouse, 1913 Walnut, the parking lot, and a bunch of other parcels of land on this block. Personally, I am very happy about the Laurel. It's big, but they've done a lot to try to keep an intimate feel at the street level, and by and large I think they've succeeded. As the construction barriers have come down, I feel better and better. I'm not sure why it took thirty years, but at this point, why quibble?

See also Quo Vadis, Philadelphia?