Fire!

As we noted yesterday, there used to be a Second Dutch Church down on Beaver Street, along with a once-sizable burying ground. The graves were mostly moved, and the church was remodeled into a printing office after 1881, which was home to J.B. Lyons, then the official state printer, and the then-small shop of C.F. Williams. On Sept. 12, 1892, the whole thing went up in flames, taking several other buildings, burning clear through from Beaver to Hudson, and destroying several State commissions’ annual reports that had been printed and bound in Lyons’ shop.

“This building ran through from Beaver Street to Hudson Avenue and had been remodelled some years ago from the old Dutch Reformed Church to a commodious building five stories high on Hudson Avenue and two stories on Beaver Street, having a frontage on both streets of about 125 feet,” the New York Times reported. “Mr. Lyons’s establishment occupied the Beaver Street side of the building, except the northeast corner of the ground floor, which was occupied by the C.F. Williams Printing Company.”

The printers weren’t the only establishments; on the Hudson Avenue side of the building were Russell Lyman, shirt and collar manufacturer; Hughes & Simpson, paper-box manufacturers; the Albany Caramel Company; F.G. Mix, agent for the Columbus Wagon Company; W.C. Gell, umbrellas; John Ingmire, paperhanger; and H.H. Walsh, saddlery.

“The flames spread through from street to street with frightful rapidity, and in twenty minutes the whole interior of the building was a seething crater. As the heavy machinery and burning timbers fell they crushed through the lower floors, carrying tons of blazing woodwork.”

The fire spread to the back of the Hotel Columbia on Beaver Street, formerly the armory of the Jackson Corps, and on into the Hotel Fort Orange. “High above stood the old church belfry. About 2:30 o’clock there was a warning cry from the outskirts of the crowd on Hudson Avenue, and a second later the lofty wall swayed for an instant, then bulged in the middle and came crashing into the street. The warning had just given the firemen at work time to flee. Other sections of the wall followed. The debris crashed through store windows on the opposite side of the street.”

J.B. Lyons was offered the facilities of the Argus, owned by Mayor Manning, until he could get on his feet. Williams Printing continued on as well. Happily, even the Albany Caramel Company survived at least another few years.