Terre Haute, IN Downtown Fire, Dec 1898

GREAT FIRE IN TERRE HAUTE.

COTTON DECORATIONS IN A WINDOW SET ABLAZE BY ELECTRIC WIRE -- LOSS OVER $2,000,000.

Terre Haute, Ind., Dec. 19. -- The worst fire in the history of Terre Haute took place tonight, causing a loss of nearly $2,000,000, and several persons were seriously injured endeavoring to escape.
The blaze started in the show windows of the Havens & Geddes Company, wholesale and retail dealers in dry goods and notions. The cause is not definitely known, but it is supposed a live electric wire set fire to the cotton with which the window was decorated.
Before the blaze could be extinguished the fire spread to the decorations of evergreens in the store, and the building was wrapped in flames in an incredibly short space of time.
The principal losses are:
Havens & Geddes, $800,000.
Breinig & Miller, furniture, $25,000.
Pixley & Co., $100,000.
Terre Haute Shoe Company, wholesale, $150,000.
Albrecht & Co., retail dry goods, $750,000.
United States Baking Company, $80,000.
Thorman & Schloss, clothiers, $50,000.
A number of small concerns were utterly annihilated in the fall of the rear wall of Havens & Gedde's wholsale house, and the loss in their case will bring the total loss up to more than $2,000,000. The fire started at 5:30 o'clock, when half the employes of the establishment were at their homes for supper. There is a force of 300 and more in the retail department of the establishment, and had the entire force been present the loss of life would have been frightful.
KATE MALONEY, a clerk in the notion department, is lying at the point of death, having sprung from a window in the second story and sustained injuries from which she will probably die.
MISS LUELLA FERGUSON, a clerk in the same department, jumped just before MISS MALONEY, but was caught by some men who were watching for her. She in internally injured, but will recover.
LOUIS KRAMER, the trimmer, who was in the show window when the fire started, is frightfully burned about the head and arms. When rescued from the furning building he was insane from the pain and begged to be killed. Firemen AUSTERLIN, WALSH and SHAY were badly injured in the falling of the floor in the Albrecht Building, and are now in the City Hospital.
The Fire Department worked admirably, and there were many narrow escapes among them. Several of the firemen are in a precarious condition from burns and the effects of the stifling smoke, but it is thought tonight that all will recover. At 11 o'clock tonight the fire was still burning fiercely in the rear of the United States Banking Company, but the firemen had it fairly well under control.
A heroic act on the part of a man named PETERS, a traveling salesman from Chicago for the Baldwin Music House, called forth cheers from the crowd watching the flames. When the fire first started PETERS was standing in the crowd and saw the MALONEY and FERGUSON girls appear at the second story windows. The girls were panic-stricken and were in momentary danger of going down with the floor. PETERS sprang through the door with his coat over his head and dashed through the flames and reached the window at which the girls had appeared, and, after talking with them, swung out from the ledge and dropped. His example was followed by the two girls.

The New York Times New York 1898-12-20

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Researched and Transcribed by Stu Beitler. Thank you, Stu!