FIRES IN COLLEGE BUILDINGS

Harvard College, in the course of its long history, has suffered a good deal from fires in its buildings. Thus, Harvard Hall was completely destroyed, with all of John Harvard's library except one book, in 1764, when the Great and General Court, driven out of Boston by an epidemic of smallpox, occupied Harvard Hall for its sessions in the middle of winter. The weather was cold, the open wood fires were piled high, and the fire broke out in the night. This disaster illustrates the rule that it is inexpedient to leave buildings whose contents are precious without human occupancy at night. This rule applies to industrial and commercial buildings as well as to educational, but is often disregarded in this country. Hollis Hall lost a part of its upper story and of its roof in 1876; and Stoughton Hall had the same experience some year in the seventies. These fires took place in the day-time, when the buildings were full of students. They show that destructive fires may take place in brick buildings whose floors and partitions are of wood, in spite of the presence of scores of active young men.

Harvard College has also had innumerable escapes from fire losses, because of the prompt extinguishment of fires started. The commonest cause of fires in the dormitories was the falling of live coals out of the grate piled too high to keep the fire during some long absence of the occupant of the room. Many fires have been started in the College buildings by students' thoughtless practice of throwing matches and the ends of cigars or cigarettes into waste-paper baskets; but these sudden flames are as a rule put out quickly, because the chances are that the fire will start while the careless student is still in his room.

When, in 1874, Memorial Hall was fitted up as a dining hall, the kitchens and serving rooms were established in the basement; and a ceiling made of mortar on wooden laths was placed on the underside of the wooden floor-timbers of the hall itself. The apparatus installed worked well and safely for several years; but one day a huge pot of melted fat took fire on one of the ranges; and immediately the kitchens were filled with hot smoke, which soon rushed through the ventilating fine and heated it to a dangerous degree. The city fire department quickly extinguished the flames before the fire had burnt through the floor of the dining room; but the escape of the building from destruction was so narrow, that the Corporation later caused a fire-proof floor to be substituted in the Hall for the preceding hollow structure of wood.

These various losses and alarms induced the Corporation, after 1872, to take certain precautions against the spread of fire in their old buildings; and after 1880 to use, or ask for,--"slow-burning" or "fire-proof" construction in their new buildings.

[Copyright, 1914, by Charles W. Eliot]