Windsor Hotel (Manhattan)

The Windsor Hotel was located at 575 5th Avenue (at the corner of East 47th Street) in Manhattan, New York.

On St Patrick's Day 1899 a fire destroyed the hotel. The firemen did their best but were hampered by the weather and the huge crowds that had been observing the parade. Almost 90 people died (estimates vary), with numerous bodies landing on the pavement, presumably of those who had thrown themselves to the street, preferring that death to being burned alive.

Dora Duncan, leading a dance class in the hotel at the time, managed to get her students, including her daughter, Isadora, to safety.

The following day's "New York Times" featured the headlines"Windsor Hotel Lies in Ashes" and "The Hotel a Fire Trap".

Despite the timing, it does not appear that there was any criminal or terrorist cause to the tragic blaze.

City Journal's description of the fire

"On Fifth Avenue between 46th and 47th Streets, on a block now completely anonymous, a fire started at the Windsor Hotel at about 3 PM on St Patrick's Day, March 17, 1899; by 3:35 the brownstone building was wrapped in flames, by 3:40 the front wall fell, and by 4:30 most of the walls were down, the rubble a huge furnace. Many people escaped, including Dora Duncan, a dance instructor, along with her 20-year-old daughter — Isadora Duncan. The family of Alfred Atmore Pope also got out, along with some of their possessions, like the Claude Monet paintings "The Haystacks" and "Boats Leaving the Harbor", visible being lowered down a ladder in one of the best-known news photos of the fire (see page 101)."

"But many others, cut off by the smoke and flames, did not escape. The New York Times reported: “At some windows men and women stood and wrung their hands in despair. At others they screamed wildly for aid.” At the fourth floor, Amelia Paddock, who had come in from Irvington just for a day of shopping, “held out her arms to the crowd, then raised her hands as if calling for mercy on her soul. Then she clambered to the window sill, poised for an instant, and leaped, while a smothered groan went up from the crowd.” Many, many others did likewise."

"The hotel proprietor, Warren F. Leland, escaped, but his 20-year-old daughter, Helen, jumped from the sixth floor; he could not identify her body. The Times said: “The terrible scenes enacted during the early part of the fire will never leave the memories of those who witnessed them.”"

"The New York Tribune described the wreckage: “All day long great clouds of steam rose high above the heated piles.” Because there had been looting, the 800 men sifting the ruins got brass tags bearing a number; the only live thing they found was a fox terrier, badly burned. By early April there were 45 known dead and 41 missing."

"On April 5, two wagons carrying 16 bodies and a coffin filled with body parts left New York for Kensico Cemetery in Westchester for burial. The next month, a committee, including hotel proprietor Leland and Elbridge Gerry,who owned the land under the hotel, announced plans for a $7,500 monument over the common grave. It would consist of a bronze female figure of grief in front of three granite columns: one perfect, to represent those who survived; a second, broken in half, for the dead who had been identified; and a third, broken off at the base, for the unidentified dead."

"But the monument never went up; the plot remains unmarked. The Kensico Cemetery burial card diagrams the wedge-shaped plot, 5 feet by 8 by 40. The burial inventory: “Man, woman, woman, woman, man, body, body, body, bodies, body, body, body, body, body, body, body, body.”"

"For a few months after the fire, owner Gerry rented the site for billboards, including one advertising “Old Valley Whiskey”. In 1901, Gerry (who headed the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children) built a strangely festive ornamental building of luxury shops—which he called, with macabre in-difference, the Windsor Arcade. It was torn down by halves in the 1910s; even the buildings that replaced it have been demolished. The two bland high-rises now occupying the site bear neither plaque nor marker."

External links

* [http://www.city-journal.org/html/13_1_urbanities-gotham_tragedy.html City Journal account of fire]