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A fire in old Boston
By adamg on Tue, 10/23/2018 - 12:31pm
The folks at the Boston City Archives wonder if you can date and place this photo of a well known Boston fire.
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Sherry Biltmore Hotel in the
Sherry Biltmore Hotel in the early 60s
Sherry Biltmore fire
March 29, 1963, 4 killed. (I flipped the picture to mostly read the sign, then let Google show me stuff related to "Biltmore fire Boston").
Sherry Biltmore fire
Just ass I suspected, another reader has identified it as the 1963 Sherry Biltmore fire, and listed the number of fatalities (4). I also recognized the building, which later housed the Berklee Performance Center.
I believe this building had been owned by the notorious Boston slumlord Maurice Gordon. Eight years later his apartment building at 50 Peterborough Street burned, killing 8. Shortly afterwards the local weeklies and the Boston Globe got into the act with investigative reporting that detailed his unsavory past, evidently starting as a Prohibition-era gangster before he got into real estate. I soon ended up as a tenant in one of his many Allston properties in the student ghetto midway between BU and BC. At the time he was metro Boston's largest landlord, with 30,000+ tenants according to the Globe.
When he died in the mid 1970s his Globe obituary actually stated: "He is best known for his housing code violations and his fires"--written, I suspect, by a Northeastern coop student who may also have been one of his tenants...
If I remember correctly, he
If I remember correctly, he made a large donation to bu and they wanted to name the school of nursing after him but there was a big protest over it and he withdrew the donation.
not the Berklee Performance Center
Before Berklee bought it, that was a cinema and concert hall called the Fenway Theatre.
Sherry Biltmore Hotel
138 Mass Ave, fire 1963, Berkeley bought it in '72. FINALLY I get one! Going out now for megamillions tix!
[Update: Did not win.]
Berklee dorm
The Sherry Biltmore has been converted to a dorm for Berklee College, for many years now. It's at 150 Mass. Ave., at the corner of Belvedere St., next door to the old movie theatre that got converted into the Berklee Performance Center. This photo shows the rear of the building on St. Cecilia St., looking north. The bridge in the background carried Boylston St. over the Boston & Albany RR tracks, before the Mass. Pike was built.
The book "Boston's Fire Trail" [History Press, 2007] has a description of the fire. The building had originally been apartments but was converted to a hotel for out-of-town guests in 1955. The hotel was almost fully occupied and there was a significant delay in notifying the fire department, which finally got the word from a police officer at around 4:00 am.
The book doesn't say who owned the building in 1963. Although Berklee has been using the building as a dorm for many years, it just last year completed a major do-over of the building, after its new dorm opened nearby.
The Answer
Thanks for playing, folks. This photo is indeed from the Sherry Biltmore Hotel Fire on March 29, 1963. The hotel was located at 146 Massachusetts Avenue. The Boston Fire Department rescued over 100 people from the hotel. The fire resulted in 27 injuries and 4 fatalities.
There was speculation...
"The Sound of Music" was playing at the Colonial Theater and there was speculation that the son of one of the actresses had been setting fires in other cities on the tour.
Bridge?
Does anyone know the story of the bridge (?) in the distance? If it is a bridge, it’s not a common design. If it’s not a bridge, I’d love to know what it is!
It was the overpass on
It was the overpass on Boylston between Mass Ave terra forms and Hereford, over the tracks to the rail yard. It went away in 1965 when the Turnpike Extension was built, and replaced with the chain link fence we see today.
Is it an elaborate guardrail
Is it an elaborate guardrail for Boylston St over the train tracks?
https://www.mapjunction.com/index.html?id=/9653
Thank you for that
Thank you for that mapjunction link.
It brings up a question for anybody that knows some shipbuilding/naval history - I panned around in that 1952 aerial view and saw something I'm trying to figure out.
Pan east from that area, going the South Boston waterfront and the drydocks area.
I see an aircraft carrier marked 38 - a quick online search reveals USS Shangri-La CV 38.
All around it, though, in the drydocks and tied up along the wharfs - I count 18 ships, about half the length of the carrier. It's hard to tell with the resolution of the old picture, but they appear to be flattops as well. I didn't see any numbers, though.
Would these be baby flattops - more officially known as Escort Carriers (CVEs)?
To see so many, so similar, all in one place (postwar mothballs)... I'm assuming they're mostly Casablanca-class, as that was the most numerous. Otherwise, it would be nearly the entire run of Commencement Bay-class.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escort_carrier