The Impact of Fire on Woodstock's Streetscape
By Jennie Shurtleff
The streetscapes of many towns in the 19th and early 20 centuries were shaped by fire, and Woodstock is no exception. One of the clearest places in Woodstock to see the impact of fire is the Village Square, where Elm and Central Streets intersect.
Above: The photo on the left shows “Edson’s Row,” a group of buildings on the south side of Central Street, prior to 1860. The photo on the right, taken in the mid 1860s, shows the Phoenix Block that replaced most of Edson’s Row after a devastating fire.
© Woodstock History Center
In the early 19th century, Woodstock’s Village Square was heralded as being one of the finest commercial districts in Vermont. The main section of this commercial district on the south side of the street was constructed by Sylvester Edson in the 1820s, and the structures that he built were collectively called “Edson’s Row.”
Early photographs show that Edson’s Row was populated with numerous merchants selling everything from clothing, carpets, and medications, to housing professionals, such as dentists.
Just down the street from Edson’s Row was the town’s Engine House; however, that appears to have provided little protection on the morning of February 10, 1860, when a fire broke out in the garret of one of the buildings within Edson’s Row. Within three hours, the majority of Edson’s Row was destroyed by fire.
A new block to replace Edson’s Row was constructed during the following summer of 1861. The rapid rebuilding of this new block inspired its name, The Phoenix Block, after the mythological bird that bursts into flames and then rises again from its ashes.
Construction of the Phoenix Block in 1861.
© Woodstock History Center
One of the few buildings on the south side of Central Street to escape the devastating fire of 1860 was a stone building that housed a carpet shop on the second floor and a crockery and dry goods store on the first floor. This building’s reprieve, however, was short-lived as it burned twenty-one years later, in 1881.
Above left: Photo showing the building that housed the carpet store and the dry goods store sometime between 1861 and 1881.
Above right: Photo showing the site of the fire that occurred in 1881.
© Woodstock History Center
Also in the Village Square, on the site that is now Dr. Coburn’s Tonic, was “Henry’s Hotel.” This building, which was one of the earliest inns in the Village, perished in flames on March 23, 1867. The fire presumably started in the barn located adjacent to the hotel.
Henry’s Hotel before the fire of 1867.
© Woodstock History Center
View of the aftermath of the 1867 fire in the Village Square that destroyed Henry’s Hotel at the corner of Elm and Central Streets. The fire also destroyed a number of other adjacent buildings, including a bank on Elm Street and the wooden part of the jail on Central Street.
© Woodstock History Center
Buildings on many other streets in Woodstock and throughout New England suffered a similar fate to Woodstock’s Village Square. While Woodstock had a Fire Society, that was formed in 1820, and whose mission was to prevent and extinguish fires, it had only the limited technology of the day at its disposal. Hampering many of its efforts to put out fires was its lack of easy access to water. The Woodstock Aqueduct Company didn’t complete its piping system to bring water to the Village until 1887.
In early times, in the absence of piped water, members of fire societies largely relied on bucket brigades, where a large number of people formed a line and passed buckets of water from one person to another to reach the fire. Given the lack of more substantive equipment and firefighting techniques, it is little surprise that so many buildings went up in flames.
Balloon framing was another factor that led to the demise of many mid to late 19th-century buildings. Balloon framing got its name because it looked as “light as a balloon” – at least in contrast to the type framing that was commonly used prior to its development.
George Snow, a carpenter in Chicago, is widely credited with having invented balloon framing, which he first used to construct a warehouse in 1832. Over the following decades, balloon framing gained in popularity, in part, because the large timbers that had formerly been used to frame buildings were becoming increasingly scarce as the country’s old-growth forests disappeared. Moreover, constructing a traditional timber-framed building that had large timbers and chiseled joints secured with wooden pegs required both a great deal of time and skill to make. In contrast, balloon framing, used long, vertical 2” x 4” “studs” that ran from the sill over the foundation to the roofline. These studs were secured solely with nails and did not require the same careful craftsmanship to erect.
While balloon framing was faster, less expensive, used more widely-available materials, and required less technical expertise to implement, it did have one major drawback. The long vertical studs, that ran uninterrupted from a building’s foundation to its roof, created a long, open cavity. If a fire started on a lower floor and entered this cavity, it allowed the fire to travel unhindered to the floors above, thus quickly engulfing the entire building in flames.
Diagram showing balloon framing. Notice how the studs create long, vertical cavities that had the unintended consequence of allowing fires to move quickly from one floor to another.
Balloon framing is not believed to have contributed to the demise of Edson’s Row because this block was constructed well before the acknowledged “invention” of balloon framing; however, in other places, balloon framing was a major contributor to runaway fires.
While Woodstock’s Village Square was profoundly changed by fire, it was not the only section of Woodstock to be so impacted. Other buildings lost or severely damaged included both the Woodstock Inn’s first and second stable, the Catholic Church, Woodstock’s first and second court house, and the Town Hall/Opera House.
Some of the buildings in Woodstock that were destroyed or severely damaged by fire. Left to right: Second Woodstock Inn Stable, Catholic Church, Woodstock’s Second Court House, and Woodstock’s Town Hall.
© Woodstock History Center
The Fire Society and Engine House
Given the sheer number of buildings lost to fire, it is little surprise that the people of Woodstock placed such value in having a fire department. While the Village had a Fire Society as early as 1820, the Village didn’t actually acquire a property on which to build a fire station or “engine house” until 1843 when they purchased a small property with a blacksmith shop that was located on the “Oil Mill Brook” (now called the Kedron). The “Danforth” blacksmith shop on the property was remodeled into the town’s first engine house.
Detail from Beers Village Map, 1869, showing the footprint of the Engine House, with a corner of the building hanging over the river.
Forty years later, in 1883, this Engine House was no longer deemed adequate, and the decision was made to build a new one on the same site. The local paper, The Spirit of the Age, reports that at a Village meeting, the voters decided to allocate a sum “not exceed $600” toward the enterprise. A few weeks later, in February of 1883, it was decided that the $600 voted at the annual meeting was “not adequate to put up a suitable house” and an additional $300 was allocated. At this same meeting, it was decided that the “hook and ladder company” would be paid “$30 a year so long as the organization was kept in working order.”
The job of building the station began in the spring. As of June 13, 1883, The Spirit of the Age reports that the “loafers” who had been watching the construction of the engine house had found their “accommodations” there “limited and uncomfortably hot,” and consequently — as the construction of the Norman Williams Library began — they had “found roomy and shady quarters superintending the building of the new library building” instead. By June 20, 1883, it is reported that “the frame of the new engine house is up,” and by July 11, “the engine house is fast approaching completion, and is already so far along that after the engine meeting of Saturday evening last the engines were stored in their new quarters.”
While the primary purpose of the engine house, as its name implies, was to house the fire engines, it also served other public needs. For instance, an article published July 18, 1883, in The Spirit of the Age notes that “The Woodstock Cornet Band is re-organized and has room in the engine house. It is composed of young men, all excellent musicians, and the prospect now is that we shall have some music by ‘The Band.’” By November, on Thanksgiving evening, a dance was held in the “band room” of the engine house, and in December of 1883, it appears that the town wished to upgrade the band’s quarters as there was a warning for an appropriation to “see if the Village will authorize the Trustees, at the expense of the Village, to finish off a room in the 2d story of the Engine-house for the use and occupancy of the Woodstock Band.”
Above: The Woodstock Cornet Band in front of the Norman Williams Public Library
© Woodstock History Center
While the old engine house clearly had a rich history, over time, as fire-fighting technology became more sophisticated, it became necessary to build a new fire station to accommodate the equipment. In 1977, the old fire station on the Kedron, located at 26 Central Street, was sold by the Village of Woodstock to Deane S. Lawrence and converted into a commercial retail property, which it remains today.
Above: A more recent view of the 1883 structure that formerly was the Woodstock Fire Station. Notice that although this building is no longer a fire station, it still retains elements related to its former use, including the square clapboard tower that was originally used for drying fire hoses.