POST TIME: The great West Palm Beach fires of 1896

Readers: Imagine building a bold new city, with great enthusiasm and hope, only to suffer, just two years in, two devastating fires just weeks apart.

Here's more on those 1896 fires from our archives, the Historical Society of Palm Beach County, and the West Palm Beach fire department:

On the day after New Year's Day 1896, a fire would burn down half of the downtown business section.

It broke out about 2 p.m. at what then was the center of town, around Narcissus and Banyan streets.

The corner sported a lunch room, a cigar and candy emporium, and saloons, as well as the drug store operated by Palm Beach pioneer Elisha Newton "Cap" Dimick.

An overheated gasoline stove exploded in the Midway Plaisance Saloon, a large wood building on the south side of Banyan Street. Soon the fire had spread to Narcissus Street, where developer and bottler George Zapf — who would serve on the inaugural city commission — had opened the Seminole Hotel in 1894.

Firefighters' hoses didn't reach, so men made a bucket line from “Lake Worth” — the Intracoastal Waterway — to the Palms Hotel on Narcissus. People wet blankets and hung them out hotel windows to tamp flames.

Within two and a half hours, an article said, "the excellent work of the fire department the fire was checked at the Stower's Building at four o'clock."

A wire story said some buildings were dynamited to slow the fire. One explosion injured several people, including E.M. Wheeler, who ran a livery. That’s a horse stable.

The Flagler Alerts, despite their efforts, had saved few of the burning structures. While the number affected wasn't listed, it totaled a third of structures on Narcissus and everything on Banyan.

Losses to buildings and contents totaled $130,000. That's $4 million in today's dollars.

"The insurance is very small and many people are made homeless," a wire story said.

On Jan. 31, a correspondent who called himself just "Phelim" wrote a Tennessee newspaper about the fire. “Instead of sitting down and crying over the result,” he wrote, residents “are going ahead and rebuilding."

Not so fast.

Next week: The second fire.

Post Time appears in print every Thursday in Neighborhood Post.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: POST TIME: The great West Palm Beach fires of 1896

___

(c)2021 The Palm Beach Post (West Palm Beach, Fla.)

Visit The Palm Beach Post (West Palm Beach, Fla.) at www.palmbeachpost.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.