WILLISTON HALL FIRE Because several of the girls who were happy in working in Williston Hall have wished to know about the fire and because you all wish to know the same things, I am sending this duplicated letter for in that way I can tell you more than if I tried to write individually. I happened to be near by and so saw the fire. It is easiest to tell about it from my own point of view even though that may not be altogether impartial.
Saturday afternoon, December 22, I went to the village store about half past four. The leisurely purchase of cookies was interrupted by someone who went hastily to the phone saying, "Williston Hall is one fire!". Those cookies were of no further importance. In Miss Hooker's oft-used phrase, I stood not on the order of my going but went at once. In the square Mr. Nichols was running toward the church shouting, "Fire - Fire" and there was no one to hear. He had seen the fire from his house and gave the alarm. I have never seen the town more deserted. It was vacation and the townspeople on the Saturday before Christmas were mostly in Holyoke. The snow was fairly deep and it seemed sadly hindering to my feet as I ran across the North Campus. The Church bell began to ring as I was by the evergreen trees and from there I could see the telephone booth like a big bonfire in the midst of the north hall lighting brilliantly both the window in the door and the hall window above. There were two or three men by the hydrant, a man opened the door for me as I ran up but he went to join the other men. Nobody else was in sight.
Inside I went for the thing I always hoped to save from fire, the collection of microscopoe [sic] slides that had been made by so many it almost told the department history in its labels. It was in the lower back hall - but as I got to the door from the physiology laboratory into that hall, there were crowds of gay little flames running down the rail and posts of the staircase, there was the great light, the crackle, the roar just above and therewas [sic] a wall of smoke shutting out all outlines save those picked out by the pointed, leaping little flames on the stairs. I wanted those slides - they never seemed so alluring, but I didn't dare go into that hall alone. So I shut the door and looked at my two laboratories. There was all that clean, pretty glassware, all that neat apparatus in vacation array. I wanted it! But I knew I couldn't make any impression on all that alone so I went to my office where one outfit of arms and legs could do something. After what seemed a long and very lonesome time, but which probably was not more than five minutes, a few people came and worked as fast as they could. We saved many of the department things from my office, Miss Stokey's office was well cleared and most of her researc[h] material saved. But no one went elsewhere for the flames rushed through the building at a speed that was amazing. I saw those same little leaping flames about the lecture room blackboard and the case with its fine new skeleton. This was at almost my first trip out and Miss Woolley who was early in the building helping take things out says that the lecture room looked like a bed of coals when she saw it last, only a few minutes later.
Mr. Kinney came to the building almost as soon as I did though we did not meet at once. He tried to get into the botany laboratories to save their microscopes but could not because the fire was already in the room behind the lecture room and in the large north laboratory[.] He thought of Miss Talbot's fossil, her famous dinosaur, but that was inaccessible to one man though two perhaps might have dashed up through the smoke and carried the heavy thing out. No one could go [to] Mr. Hayes' rooms on the third floor, no one could get into any part of the north east section where the zoology rooms were, no one could get to Dr. Clapp's office off room E where were locked up all her records of the department's growth and history, all her pictures of life at Wood's Hole, The [sic] pictures of Miss Wallace, all those interesting things she used to bring out and talk about as no one else could do - like Miss Shattuck's notes on Agassiz' lectures at Penikese. I might have been able to get a few things in those first few minutes but the keys were in Mr. Snow's office and the doors were good and strong. I didn't think of them in time any way but I'm glad to know I couldn't have gotten them.
We went in and out for only a fwe [sic] minutes when the smoke stopped us. The things that had been taken out were being put for safety into Mary Lyon Hall by so many helpers that I wnt [sic] to see how our laboratories were burning, when - there were men going into my laboratory windows! Some no account tables and stools came out and then - microscopes! The flames were rolling out of the windows above but the men under Mr. Kinney's direction went in again and again and brought out 26 microscopes and two cases containing dissecting instruments, in all about $1800.00 worth of apparatus which we are finding of the greatest use. Later we saw that these rooms were surrounded by heavy brick walls and not until the fire actually burned through the heavy door did the room fill with smoke. Most of the doors in the rest of the building were cheerfully open so that smoke and flames had free course.
The things saved from the physiology laboratory were put out i [sic] into the grove and presently sparks began to fall there, a golden rain int a world all alight, with the branches black against the gleaming clouds of smoke above. We moved things hastily into Porter Hall which Mrs. Celestia Smith had left in perfect order! The microscopes fell out of their cases, a few oculars were lost, and snow was on everything. There was also a curious rain of sand we suppose from the plaster which was carried up in the swirling curents from the huge blaze. A man whose arms were full of a most miscellaneous assortment said to me, "Excuse me, but would you mind brushing that cinder off my coat?" 'Twas a coal as big as a flame red poppy. Among the other thing which appeared in the grove was that pet abomination of everyone who ever worked in room B, the revolving bookcase! That article of furniture has survived two fires twenty years apart and is still in excellent repair.
The wind was not strong and nothing save the wooden roof of the rink was in real danger though Porter Hall was also guarded. It iss [sic] said that Mr. Fox thought of everything. It was wonderful out in the grove - that magnificent blaze, for the roof fell very soon and the flame was all unhindered. We all worked in that magic place, with the gorgeous light, the fierce heat near the fire, the rain of sparkseven [sic] as far as Porter - the beauty of it all a thing to remember as well as the tragedy. There were wonderful red colors in the flames, great black swirls of smoke, a few explosions when the flames reached the chemicals. And then the glow of the smouldering heaps of ruins on the clouds of silvery white smoke and steam within the half fallen walls as the fire died down.
There was an attempt to fight the fire. Our men did valiant work under Mr. Fox, the village fire department came and later help from South Hadley Falls and Holyoke but from the first the fire was triumphant. Probably the last person left the last room less than half an hour after the alarm was given. Had the college been in session probably the fire would hav ebeen discovered sooner and perhaps checked, certainly it would not have been so poorly attended and much more would have been saved. Of research work only Miss Stokey's was gotten out and much unpublished work remained in the building. Of equipment only a small amount of that belonging to the physiology department was saved, scarce a "track" from the famous track-room, hardly a mineral specimen came trhough, nothing from the zoölogical museum. Careful search was made in the ruins for Miss Talbot's remarkable fossil but not even a fragment was found. After the ruins cooledsome [sic] zoology glassware was taken from the "kitchen [sic] where the incubator was, for that was the only room in the building inot [sic] which the fire did not go. It was near the origin of the fire but was surrounded by heavy brick walls and the fire burned in the other direction. The things in that room were of less value than any others we had. The libraries are all gone, files of periodicals, Dr. Clapp's large collection of reprints, the books. Some can be easily replaced but others are rare and out-of-print. One thing came through in good shape and that an especially rare thing too, the set of plates from Duval's Atlas of Chick Embryology which was mounted on big cards. The cards were chared around the ed [sic] edges but the plates are good. A few books in my office were gotten out but nothing of particular value.
The cause of the fire is not known. It surely did not take from any of our gas jets or chemicals. There is no reason to think of it as incendiary. What seems to me the most probable theory is an unrecognized defect in the electric wiring, for therewere [sic] manywires [sic] near the place where fire started and practically nothing else to which fire might be due. But no one is accused of carelessness.
The insurance on building and equipment was about $90,000. It will take at least three or four times that sum to build and equip the right sort of new building to house botany, geology, zoology, and physiology. We don't expect to bild [sic] it until after the war but we would like to have someone give the money now, some one who is inadvertently getting rich out of the war. The third floor of Skinner Hall is being finished even now for permanent quarters for psychology, a very desirable arrangement. Geology is using some of the lower floor of the library and will continue to do so until there is a new natural science building. The botany laboratory work is being done in the Plant-house and zoology uses Assembly Hall as a laboratory with a class room on the floor above. Physiologyis [sic] in the basement room in Mary Lyon Hall and in the Art Building and on the road between.
Miss Morgan had left town a few hours before the fire. She came back at once. On monday [sic], Dec. 24, we had a meeting of all heads of departments except Miss Stokey who was in Cincinnati with Miss Woolley, Mr. Adams (Treasurer), Mr. Skinner, Miss Purington and Miss Greene to make plans for carrying on the work of this semester and to look farther ahead. At firft [sic] it seemed possible to build a temporary building of one story and basement on the old foundations which were secure. We thought we should like to continue to go in and out the familiar doorway but the cost was found to be so great for something which would last only a short [sic] and then be torn down that the plan was abandoned. The present hope is rather a building to be later of some permanent use to the college and to serve temporarily as a laboratory building for botany, zoology and physiology. The decision has not been made definitely. We shall work as we are doing now during the second semester and look for better arrangements next year.
Most helpful letters have come from other institutions and departments, from individual scientists and alumnae. Some gifts have already arrived and the promise of others, slides, books, reprints, specimens. We are beginning to gather not only the immediately practical but things of varied interest. For instance a skeleton who comes introduced as "Jennie" never had but twenty two ribs, an unusual freak. Offers of most helpful loans have also been made by several institutions and the continuance of some of our work has been possible only because of this discriminating assistance.
There is tremendous stimulus in it all. Just think of being able to plan courses unhampered by what you have on hand! But also there are responsibilities connected with such a situation. What we hope most is that in new quarters with almost nothing to suggest the inspiring earlier years of the department, without Dr. Clapp's daily presence we yet may keep the spirit she gave to our laboratory, the spirit that made it a place you loved to be in.
Very sincerely yours,
[Unsigned, but written by Abby Turner]Mount Holyoke College.
South Hadley, Mass.January 21, 1918