Salem, Massachusetts, 1914
By 1914 the glory days of Salem as a shipping and whaling port were well behind the old city. Industries such as cloth mills and tanneries had largely supplanted the sea as the leading sources of employment. The city had a large immigrant population contributing to its occupation by 48,000 people. Most of these immigrants lived in communities of their own, and the city was divided into neighborhoods with the distinct flavors of the Poles, Italians, Irish and French-Canadians that peopled them.
The neighborhood of La Pointe was largely French-Canadian, with many of the residents employed by the Korn Leather Company tannery. It was in the Korn tannery, on a hot July day in the midst of an extended drought, a fire started in a storage shed. Tanneries use numerous chemicals in the processing of hides and nearly all are highly flammable. The chemicals caused the Korn facility to quickly become engulfed in flames and explosions, and the dry conditions from the drought helped the fire to spread to other buildings.
Overwhelmed firemen quickly called for help and more than 20 Massachusetts’ towns responded. Boston transported fire equipment to the scene by rail. The National Guard responded so quickly that they were distributing food to displaced families before the flames were extinguished.
The fire burned for thirteen hours and some of the ruins were still smoldering three weeks later. The damage done to the city included the loss of nearly 1,400 buildings in an area 1.5 miles long by a half-mile wide. Eighteen thousand were left homeless, ten thousand unemployed.
The city’s manufacturing industry never recovered. Salem became a town focused on tourism and its historical past for the common livelihood. One building which escaped largely unscathed by the flames was soon featured in national advertising by Johns-Manville Corporation. The advertisement touted its survival as being a result of its roof’s construction from a relatively new building material – asbestos.