Revisiting the Ruins: The Great Boston Fire of 1872

Abstract

A four o’clock in the morning on Sunday, November 10th, 1872, artist James Wells Champney scurried to the rooftop of the Studio Building on Tremont Street in Boston’s Beacon Hill. A fire had begun shortly before midnight in the nearby downtown area, and the flames were a sight to behold. With pencil and brush, Champney recorded what he saw. (Fig. 1) In a fluid wash of monotone ink, Champney captured the smoke-filled air and billowing flames while frenzied pencil strokes articulated nearby rooftops and fellow spectators. From Champney’s vantage point, the conflagration threatened Old South Meeting House and the Boston Evening Transcript building on Washington Street. Firefighters managed to save Old South later that evening, but the Transcript Building became one of several hundred structures devoured by the Great Boston Fire. Champney’s ink wash drawing offers a view similar to what would have been seen from the rooftop of the Boston Athenæum at 10 1⁄2 Beacon Street, just three stories high at the time. The Athenæum’s building survived the fire by a mere two blocks, but the event still impacted the institution. Today, a century and a half later, the Athenæum holds one of the most significant collections related to the Great Boston Fire. Revisiting the Ruins: The Great Boston Fire of 1872, a special exhibition that ran from April 7 through July 29, 2023, in the Athenæum’s new Norma Jean Calderwood Gallery, looks critically at the ways artists, photographers, reporters, and