1901: The Great Fire


About noon, 3 May 1901.  The Cleveland Fiber Company, makers of mattresses using Spanish moss as stuffing, had laid out bundles of moss on outdoor drying racks.  From a humble abode nearby, sparks from a wood-burning cookstove drifted up out of the chimney and landed on the drying moss.  It ignited, and soon a Cleveland company storage shed filled with dried moss caught fire.  Workers made a vain attempt to extinguish the fire, but wind defeated them when the roof of the shed fell in, generating a shower of burning moss and sparks that ignited the wooden roofs of the nearby houses in the low-income neighborhood.  The weather was an ally of the fire, the temperature that day reaching 93 degrees Fahrenheit.  Since March 27, there had been barely one and one-half inches of rain.  The area was considered to be in the grasp of a drought.  Northwest winds drove the flames south and east.  The resulting huge columns of smoke could be seen in Raleigh, North Carolina.

The first alarm was sounded at 12:35 p.m., but firefighters soon found themselves facing a sheer wall of flame and clouds of dense smoke.  Calls for help went out by telegraph to fire departments in Orlando, St. Augustine and Fernandina in Florida, and to Brunswick, Savannah, and Waycross in Georgia.  Fire units from outside Jacksonville arrived within two hours.  The inferno raged for just over eight hours until it was brought under control, having run into the barriers of the St. Johns River to the south and Hogan's Creek to the east.

Jacksonville's 1901 fire is ranked the third worst such disaster in United States history, behind the San Francisco earthquake's resulting fire (1906) and the famous Chicago fire (1871).  Seven people perished in the fire; it was proclaimed a miracle that the death toll was not higher.  Some ten thousand were left homeless.  Four hundred sixty-six acres burned to the ground, constituting the entire downtown area of the city.  The courthouse was a casualty, with the resulting loss of public records.

Property damage was rated at fifteen million dollars, of which four million was uninsured.  The insurance coverage on the other eleven million dollars worth of property was five million, six hundred fifty thousand.  The net property loss, then, was nine million, three hundred fifty thousand.  To prevent looting and other mischief, martial law was imposed on 4 May.  In the river, two revenue cutters (the precursor of the U.S. Coast Guard) stood ready.

The fire destroyed businesses.  It destroyed all public buildings except the federal courthouse.  It demolished schools, including the main building of Edward Waters College, a black institution of higher learning.  It leveled churches, including the First Presbyterian Church, the Catholic Church of the Immaculate Conception, and St. John's Episcopal parish church.  Construction on the replacement for the Catholic church, in the Late Gothic Revival style, did not begin until 1907; it was completed in 1910.  St. John's Episcopal was also rebuilt in Gothic Revival, with a square bell tower, a referent to English (Anglican) church construction.  St. John's was designated the cathedral of the Diocese of Florida in 1951.

News of the fire spread across the country.  People all around the U.S. who had ties to Jacksonville sent money to help pay for the rebuilding of the city.  Fire codes were tightened.  One fire-retardant material used all across the city on new construction was the metal roof.  Another family rebuilt their burned-out home with Portland cement.

The fire damage attracted some highly talented architects to Jacksonville from as far away as New York City.  Wilbur Bacon Camp, J. H. W. Hawkins, Rutledge Holmes were some of these architects.  Also inspired by the opportunity was Henry John Klutho, said by many to be one of Florida's finest architects.  These individuals left their mark on office buildings, public buildings, and private homes, lasting landmarks in the city of Jacksonville.

References:

"Jacksonville Weather in 1901," Extreme Weather Watch (online), https://www.extremeweatherwatch.com/cities/jacksonville/year-1901 (accessed 5 May 2025).

Crooks, James B.  Jacksonville After the Fire, 1901-1919: A New South City.  (Jacksonville: University of North Florida Press, 1991).

Davis, T. Frederick, History of Jacksonville, Florida, and Vicinity, 1513 to 1924. (Facsimile reprint of the 1925 edition; Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1964).

Jacksonville Historic Landmarks Commission.  Jacksonville's Architectural Heritage: Landmarks for the Future.  (Jacksonville: University of North Florida Press, 1989).

 Photo credits:

Top:  City going up in smoke - Jacksonville, Florida. 1901. State Archives of Florida, Florida Memory. <https://www.floridamemory.com/items/show/30530>, accessed 5 May 2025. 

Bottom:    Photo credit: Burning buildings - Jacksonville, Florida. 1901. State Archives of Florida, Florida Memory. <https://www.floridamemory.com/items/show/4656>, accessed 5 May 2025.



 

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