A Lamp Left Burning in the Kitchen Erases Cusick's Hotel and Store
The Ponderay Hotel and the Usk Mercantile Co. store burn to the ground an hour after midnight, and the town learns neither may ever reopen.
The Ponderay hotel and the store building of the Usk Mercantile Co., at Cusick, were destroyed by fire on Thursday morning at about one o'clock. The fire originated in the hotel and was caused by the explosion of a lamp that had been left in the kitchen by the wife of the landlord. The guests of the house escaped with only a portion of their personal effects.
The store building was directly opposite the hotel and caught fire from the burning building. Nothing was saved from either building excepting a few papers that Mr. Chalenor of the Mercantile company secured. His insurance policies were destroyed.
The hotel was formerly conducted by the Samples of Cusick but has been owned by J. T. Harris for some time. His loss is estimated at about $4,000. It is not known whether he had any insurance. He had cancelled $3,200 insurance on the property recently, which had been carried by one of the Newport agents.
Frank Chalenor, proprietor of the Usk Mercantile Co., sustained a loss of probably $6,000 or $7,000 with an insurance of $5,500 with the Rodgers & Talmadge agency of this city.
The loss to Cusick is a severe one as it is understood that the hotel will not be rebuilt and the chances are against the re-opening of the Mercantile Co.'s store.
“The loss to Cusick is a severe one as it is understood that the hotel will not be rebuilt and the chances are against the re-opening of the Mercantile Co.'s store.”
For a town the size of Cusick, losing the hotel and the mercantile in a single hour was a body blow — lodging, mail, dry goods and credit all gone at once, and the paper's verdict was that neither would come back. The cancelled insurance policy is the detail that stings across a century: Harris had just let his coverage lapse, a decision his neighbors would have discussed for years. Small-town main streets still live or die on this kind of threshold event.
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