Front Street Fire 1896

DatesNovember 11 1896

DescriptionA fire that consumed the 200 block of East Front Street in Traverse City Michigan on November 11, 1896. The fire, that began at the Front Street House hotel crept westward, likely due to the strong wind blowing southwest, burned the eastern half-block of Front Street between Park and Cass Streets.[73] As the fire spread, it destroyed or damaged a total of fourteen businesses,; including the saloon of Peter Bostrum, C.A. Bugbee’s drug store, the Brosch & Sons’ meat market, C.A. Cavis’ Cigar store, H. Cook grocery store, Griffith & Martin barbershop, J.J. Baker’s building, Loren Fuller’s building, the Ellis Building, Rich & Hallberg building, Ransom & Son’s store, Mrs. Daniels’ grocery store, E. C. Stiles, and the dray office of George Jameson. Further occupants' experienced tremendous losses, the families and individuals living above businesses lost almost everything in the fire.[74] On the north side the conflagration damaged a few buildings, primarily the few wooden buildings located between Steinberg’s Grand Opera House and Park Street. Steinberg's Grand Opera House was not razedby the fire but could not withstand the immense heat of the fire, cracking the plate glass of the Grand Opera House’s facade. The intensity of the fire is expressed by the Grand Traverse Herald, describing how with eclectic lights cut off in the city, the blaze colored the snow “a lurid red, and made it light enough to see to read.”

Source of descriptionZoe Schwartz, "Traverse City is on Fire!" TADL Local History Collection, updated November 26, 2024, https://www.tadl.org/posts/traverse-city-fire.