FIRE: When we left off, fire was racing through a city block on Main Street of Bradford in June of 1896.

“People occupying (the Hatch variety store building) and the adjoining structures realized that they were going to lose their homes and made an effort to retrieve such of their possessions as were movable. In this work but little progress was made, however, and the chief trouble was that articles could not be carried quickly across the torn-up street.”

Railway builders were in the process of excavating to place tracks, and stones were lining the street. The Era story told of residents carrying items out of the burning buildings, but falling over the debris in the street and dropping their possessions, many of which were stolen by passersby.

“Streams were spraying on the rear portion of the burning Whitehead building, but as the fire had secured a strong start, it was not easily stopped. The water did not have the dampening effect that the spectators had hoped to see.”

The fire consumed a block of buildings that night. Also burned were the Zook building, Bay State Hotel, Nick Asselto’s Little Casino cigar store, McCourt’s restaurant, the Tammaro building and the Sondheim building.

“At 11 o’clock the front and side of the Sondheim building wavered and crashed into the burning ruins of the structure and an immense mass of sparks and burning embers was wafted high in the air as a sort of farewell demonstration of the fiery element. Its night’s work had been accomplished and nothing remained now for the fire to do but to finish its destruction of the buildings already within the path of ruin.”

The fire stretched from 62 Main St. to approximately 74 Main St., destroying a grocery, photo gallery, merchant tailor, a wallpaper store, the Bay State Hotel, Little Casino cigar store, Half Dime restaurant, Tammaro & Co. confectionary and G.W. Spangler meat market.

In the following days, city officials voted to add fire police to the emergency ranks.