In 1907, Santa Claus was briefly blamed for devastating Springfield fire
Santa Claus was briefly blamed for a Dec. 21, 1907, fire that destroyed the eastern half of the 600 block of East Adams Street. The final damage estimate, over $137,000, made the fire the most expensive in Springfield history up to that time.
The blaze started in the Johnston-Hatcher store on the southwest corner of Seventh and Adams streets. Johnston-Hatcher sold home furnishings of all kinds, including horse-drawn buggies and carriages. It operated from 1905 until 1949.
The fire demolished five buildings on the south side of Adams –another furniture outlet, a men’s clothing store, a shoe store and a restaurant as well as the Johnston-Hatcher store itself. The blaze stopped when it reached the Bressmer department store farther west on Adams, but two hotels, a bookstore and other businesses were damaged on Seventh Street, and heat and smoke broke windows in buildings on the north side of Adams.
The fire apparently started below a display window where Johnston-Hatcher’s Santa Claus, James Goetz, talked to children via a speaking tube to the outside. That led to a rumor that Goetz had started the fire when he lit his pipe. The Sunday Illinois State Journal even included a drawing of a pipe-smoking Santa as the centerpiece of a nine-photograph fire collage that took up all of the paper’s front page.
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However, Goetz said he had neither a pipe nor matches in the window. Officials said it appeared that a short-circuit in wiring beneath Goetz’s window ignited the cotton “snow” in the Santa layout, the Illinois State Register reported.
“So sudden was the early spread of the flames the entire Johnston-Hatcher building was gone before the news of the fire had spread,” the Register said. “Like a flash the fire worked its way from floor to floor and darted heavenward from windows and doors, converting the building into one vast furnace, defying the firemen and meaning destruction inevitable.
“It was one of the most sensationally spectacular fires ever witnessed in Springfield. It sets a new record.”
Among those who responded to the blaze was Susan Lawrence Dana, who “bought 150 sandwiches and distributed them among the firemen and volunteers, giving them coffee also to renew their energies,” the Register reported. “This was greatly appreciated by the men.”
No one died in the fire, although at least 10 people were injured, most when they jumped from a malfunctioning freight elevator or from windows and fire escapes.
Johnston-Hatcher rebuilt, but a second spectacular blaze, on Oct. 11, 1913, demolished the new building as well. Once again, flames swept west along that half block of Adams, and once again they stopped when they reached the stalwart walls of the Bressmer building. (Bressmer’s kept its fireproof image until 1948, when it was destroyed by fire. More than 70 years later, that $1.3 million blaze remains the most expensive in city history.)
Not surprisingly, given Johnston-Hatcher’s history of fires, newspaper coverage of the store’s second reopening in 1915 prominently mentioned the fire precautions, among them an innovative sprinkler system, included in the new building.
They worked. The only instance in which the sprinklers were needed, according to newspaper records, took place in 1942, when their water extinguished a fire that burnt a dozen mattresses on the building’s fourth floor.
Although Johnston-Hatcher Co. closed in 1949, the 1915 building still stands; it houses a marijuana dispensary today.
Excerpted from SangamonLink.org, the online encyclopedia of the Sangamon County Historical Society.
This article originally appeared on State Journal-Register: In 1907, store's Santa Claus was briefly blamed for Springfield fire
