A disastrous event occurred in Brookfield 110 years ago last week that forever changed the course of its history. Wednesday, July 7, 1897 was the date of the Great Grossdale Pavilion Fire. The wood-framed pavilion was located on the northeast corner of Prairie and Brookfield avenues.
The Grossdale Pavilion was a classic Victorian building of a large size designed to impress people. It was elaborately decorated with gingerbread trim; metal fretwork lined the roof. From the weather vane atop its central tower down to its ground-level porch railings, it was truly the largest building in the village.
The pavilion was erected in the spring of 1889. Its first known photo was taken in May 1889, and shows newly planted, spindly American Elm trees planted around it along rutty, dirt roads.
By Grossdale’s opening day on June 15, 1889, the Grossdale Pavilion was ready for use. The S.E. Gross Real Estate office, located at the southeast corner of Dearborn and Randolph streets in Chicago, had a branch office in the pavilion.
The building, which Gross boasted had cost $10,000 to complete, was Grossdale’s business center, and the Victorian equivalent of a mini-mall.
On the ground level, in front, was Campbell’s grocery store. Besides food, newspapers, books, magazines and dry goods (fabric and clothing) were also sold. Campbell’s was where the first telephone in Grossdale was put into operation on Oct. 1, 1894.
Fred Bowman operated the first drug store in a room further back. Later, Dr. Edwin Kline took over the business, calling it the Grossdale Pharmacy. Besides his line of drugs, Kline operated a lunch room and ice cream parlor. He even concocted, as did other druggists, several original bottled perfume scents. Lastly, he advertised the presence of his drug store by having Max Johnke, the local blacksmith, make for him a tin mortar and pestle. This was hung up on a wire tied between the southwest corner of the pavilion and an elm tree.
Also at ground level was George A. Darnell’s coal and lumber business office, east of the center front windows. At the extreme rear of the building were the schoolrooms, where children of many ages learned their ABCs at the Grossdale School. Miss Mary Shrock and Miss Lydia Wright were the first teachers here.
On the second floor was a combined theater and meeting hall. Fraternal orders, such as the Odd Fellows, met here. Saturday night dances were extremely popular, with all-denominational church services held the next morning in the same space. Sometimes the dancers, who’d been whooping it up into the early hours, dozed off at these church services and drowned out the holy words of the traveling clergyman, Rev. Meyers, who was the first pastor in the village.
At the pavilion, the question “Should Grossdale Become Incorporated?” was answered, with a vote (sorry, men only, ladies) being taken. Incorporation meant that improvements could be made, using taxes levied. On Nov. 7, 1893, the voters cast their ballots, 2-to-1 for incorporation. Vote totals were updated during the day, with the numbers written on paper sheets and glued to the windows so that everyone knew the current count. This was also done during regular elections.
In 1894, the rear second floor rooms became the village council rooms, and the first village hall was established. The pavilion was known by many names, including The Hall. Signs didn’t help much. They didn’t seem to last very long on the center porch roof.
Early on, there wasn’t any sign. Then there was a wraparound sign across the upper balcony railing that read “Grossdale Hall.” Next, there was one that read “Grossdale Hotel Pavillion” (with two Ls), when some upper floor rooms were for rent.
The pavilion was the gathering place for the growing community, whose population was reported to be at 600 in 1894, and estimated to be a few hundred more by 1897.
The first days of July 1897, were hot ones for the Midwest. Chicago papers recorded the news that little children were dying from the heat, and that farmers were only able to do work in their fields at night. The sun was baking the area during the day, and people were praying for rain and a break in the weather. But it just got hotter and hotter, day after day.
People slept on their porches at night, or on the crinkling yellow grass, parched for lack of water. Any cooking was done outdoors, if possible, or on small stoves in cooler cellars. There was one other cool place in Grossdale. Paschke’s Meat Market, in the 1893-erected Winkrans building east of the pavilion, had a walk in, ice-operated “refrigerator” to store meats in. I wonder if Paschke ever invited a few friends over? He must’ve been very popular.
On Wednesday, July 7, residents awoke to another scorcher. Close to noon, the womenfolk all over the village planned lunch, as usual. Probably a cold lunch, nothing hot. Cold meat sandwiches, if the family iceboxes were still keeping food cool. Maybe some member of the family was sent out for cold cuts, to Paschke’s. Maybe it was some man, who ventured out into the burning noontime sun.
At 11:45 a.m. this man walked to or from Paschke’s, in the shade, along the alley in back of the tall pavilion. He was smoking a cigar down to its stub. He took it from his mouth and flung it away. It hit the ground, just back of the privies and storage shed, and caused the greatest disaster in the village’s history.
All in one small building, backing the alley, were the “gents” privy, the village’s storage shed and the “ladies” privy. The lit cigar hit the ground, sodden with kerosene leaking from a steel drum in the shed. The kerosene was used to refill the village’s oil-burning street lamps.
A small flame flickered up, then spread, climbing the wooden walls of the privies and shed, then racing along the dry wooden sidewalk connected up to the pavilion’s two-story back porch. This sidewalk was built so people going to the privies didn’t have to walk on mud. Also, schoolchildren used to stand on this walk, facing east, to have their school pictures taken.
The rear porch was quickly ablaze, and finally somebody saw the smoke. According to a July 8, 1897 Chicago Tribune article, that person was Grossdale Magnet editor and former Grossdale Village President Henry Cranwell. He saw the smoke from his home at 3626 Grand Blvd., raced to the new S.E. Gross School a short distance away, and rang the school bell several times to alert everyone.
Cranwell ordered his 11-year-old son, Bronson, to “mount his trusty wheel and ride as if before a prairie fire” to LaGrange for help from their fire department. Off he went, furiously pedaling his bicycle. Along the way he shouted the news, like a boy Paul Revere, that “The Hall is on fire!”
He may have stopped at McGrew’s Drug Store, on the southwest corner of Burlington and LaGrange Road, to gasp out his news. Here somebody could telephone the fire department for help. The lines were down in Grossdale.
At the pavilion, residents with pans, buckets and anything that could hold water, formed lines to a single hand-operated water pump. But the entire building was in flames, and no little pans of water were going to make much difference.
Over from the north, workers completing the streetcar line abandoned their work, running over to help. Fire departments from Riverside and Lyons arrived to do what they could. Editor Cranwell led some strong men into the rear of the burning building to lift up the heavy safe containing the precious village documents, and throw it out the window onto Prairie Avenue. Then it was moved to safety.
The pavilion’s tower looked like a tall flaming candle. Then it pitched forward, crushing the front porch. In the drug store, while ice cream was melting, bottled drugs were exploding and fizzing, creating colorful clouds of dangerous smoke. Every now and then, little explosions were heard in the building, from kerosene oil lamps bursting. Out back in the storage shed, the bubbling, boiling cans of kerosene oil exploded, sending their fiery liquid in all directions.
Marshal Charles Kautt decided that order must be maintained, so he ran home for an old saber sword, and marched up and down in front of the burning building, warning people away, even people who wanted to help. They didn’t like being threatened with a sword and thought he looked ridiculous.
“He marched while Grossdale burned” was the general opinion. Within a month, he was no longer marshal.
The brick Winkrans Building next door to the east suffered some damage. The roof needed replacing, and the windows and upper floor needed work, but the building survived and still exists today, as the home of the Loca Mocha coffeehouse. Other buildings, hundreds of feet away, suffered minor damage from flying, burning debris.
The Grossdale Pavilion was a smoldering ruin by nightfall. Residents were treated for burns, but, miraculously, not one person died in the fire. The village hired men to watch the smoking ruins in case glowing embers remained that could do more damage.
The fire was over. The village knew that it needed fire-fighting equipment and voted $2,000 for this. But, as far as the village board minutes show, nothing much was done about this until the early 1900s.
Almost immediately, S.E. Gross announced that he would rebuild the pavilion. But he never did. Somehow the pavilion’s fire insurance policy had lapsed. He lost everything, except for the land, covered now in cold, charred debris.
From this point on, many people in the village were against him. This led to the first attempt to change the village’s name to Montauk in 1901, but that effort failed. However, four years later, the name of Brookfield replaced that of Grossdale, and the only name of Gross left in the village since that time has been S.E. Gross School.
There are so many “what ifs” here. What if that man had waited another 10 seconds before tossing away his lit cigar butt? What if he’d tossed it north, in the other direction? What if Gross had rebuilt the pavilion and not forced the residents to come up with their own money to build a “fireproof” brick village hall in 1899, next to Salt Creek?
We might still be Grossdale, and have a wonderful, historic, wide-porched Victorian building at the corner of Prairie and Grossdale avenues.