A Fire Started in a Brothel. It Took Centralia's Opera House and Newspaper.
A blaze behind a Tower Avenue saloon jumped to the Binkley opera house and the Daily News office, gutting a commercial block despite heavy rain and a fierce firefight.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Special to the Tribune.
CENTRALIA, Dec. 1.—The largest fire that has ever taken place in this city broke out yesterday in the rear of the Horseshoe saloon, in rooms occupied by Nellie Palmer as a house of ill fame. The loss will reach $60,000, with an insurance of $20,000. So quickly did the fire progress that the inmates of the upper floor had to make their escape by ladders from the front of the building, the stairway being enveloped in flames. Notwithstanding that a heavy rain was falling, the fire spread rapidly to the store of McGiffert, Lee & Co., on the corner of Tower Avenue, and thence along the avenue and also in a westerly direction, attacking the Binkley opera house, Park saloon building and the Daily News office, on the corner of Main and Pearl streets, all of which were quickly consumed. On Tower Avenue the fire burned out Frank M. Browning, real estate; Samuel Deane, drugs and medicines; Hoss Brothers, butchers; Drs. Francis and Dumon; A. L. Aiken Co., paints, oils and sash and doors; Butts & Co., jewelers; and Coonen Chapman, books and periodicals. By almost superhuman efforts of the firemen the fire was stopped here, after gutting a number of smaller offices. The losses are as follows:
Loss. Insurance. McGiffert, Lee Co. $30,000 $15,000 Hoss Brothers 600 none Coonen Chapman 1,000 500 W. S. Deane 3,000 1,000 Daily News 3,000 none W. E. Binkley 8,000 2,000 Patterson & Eguer 1,600 800 John T. Laraway 1,500 William Virge 200 Electric Light Company 500 Nellie Palmer 200 Telephone Company 200
“So quickly did the fire progress that the inmates of the upper floor had to make their escape by ladders from the front of the building, the stairway being enveloped in flames.”
Centralia's 1891 fire was the kind of total-loss blaze that remade Western downtowns block by block; the rebuilt commercial district is the one later generations inherited. The episode is a reminder that fire codes, water pressure, and insurance are not abstractions—they decide which towns survive their worst night.
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