Damn the Old Tinderbox!: Milwaukee's Palace of the West and the Fire That Defined an Era
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"The burning of Milwaukee's Newhall House hotel was one of the most sensational disasters of the Gilded Age. The fire started in the house elevator shaft, leveling the building - once the tallest in the nation - in just over an hour. The Newhall overnight staff spend nearly ten minutes trying to fight the fire themselves, even after it became clear the house was doomed, made no effort to wake any of the guests asleep within its walls. Seventy-five lives were lost that night, many of the bodies were so badly mutilated that no positive identification was ever made. The gruesome fate of those tra...
"The burning of Milwaukee's Newhall House hotel was one of the most sensational disasters of the Gilded Age. The fire started in the house elevator shaft, leveling the building - once the tallest in the nation - in just over an hour. The Newhall overnight staff spend nearly ten minutes trying to fight the fire themselves, even after it became clear the house was doomed, made no effort to wake any of the guests asleep within its walls. Seventy-five lives were lost that night, many of the bodies were so badly mutilated that no positive identification was ever made. The gruesome fate of those trapped inside the house - particularly the 35 members of the Newhall's live-in domestic staff who were killed, including a dozen who leapt to their deaths rather than be burned alive - made the story a sensation. An investigation into the blaze determined it to be the work of an arsonist. But while the nation was gripped by the search for the arsonist, they largely ignored the string of failures that had laid the house so vulnerable in the first place. The burning of the Newhall could have proven a major turning point in American urban history. It could have stimulated substantial discussion about the needed modernization of fire departments and building codes, and the public's role in their own survival in the event of a disaster. But the era's media was more interested in selling sensation and outrage than promoting reform, and local officials were content to try a single man for setting the fire while allowing the systemic flaws of the time and place to remain intact. While the origins of the Newhall fire remain a mystery to this day, the story of the blaze paints a grim portrait of an era when progress was scripture, life was cheap, and time spent reflecting was time wasted"--
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