Series title: Ruins of Great Fire in Boston, Nov. 9 and 10, 1872.
Description: The title of this view can only make sense if you add "Street" after "South." Summer Street itself doesn't have much south to it. In which case we are looking a little north of due west, along Summer Street. It you look closely at the very center of the image, you will see a bottle-shaped object that I take to be the top of a fire engine. While it is hard to judge much of anything in this vast field of debris, I would guest that the engine is outside of the skirt-hoop factory where the fire started.
The Photographer: John P. Soule
The History:
Boston's Great Fire started in the elevator shaft of a building near the corner of Summer and Kingston Streets in the early evening of Nov. 9, 1872. It had spread to the upper stories by the time passers-by spotted it. From the very beginning, circumstances conspired to turn it into a disaster. Recent false alarms has prompted the city to put locks on the alarm boxes. Only policemen had keys, and one had to be found. A recent epidemic of equine flu had left the city, including its fire department, short of horses. Volunteers had to be found to pull fire wagons to the scene. Development, especially of the wool trade, had recently replaced residential housing with densely packed narrow streets of buildings in the new French style: brick or granite walls, but wooden mansard roofs. And all packed to the rafters with wool and other flammable materials. So the fire quickly spread. And when help and equipment arrived from other cities, and then from other states, a lack of standardization meant that many of those engine's hoses could not connect to Boston's hydrants.
By the time it was brought under control the following day, a large part of Boston's business district had been destroyed. Some 65 acres and almost 800 buildings had been laid waste. Fortunately nearly all of Boston's photographer's studios were just outside the Burnt District, so they were quickly on the scene capturing images of the ruins. Soule's studio was on the undamaged side of Washington Street. This is one of hundreds of stereoviews that were made after the fire. Soule alone produced over one hundred.
Please visit my store to see more pictures of the Great Fire by Pollock, Soule and other great photographers.