LYNN ― On Saturday evening, the Lynn Museum hosted a presentation on a dark chapter of the city’s history that nevertheless burns bright in memory.
On the night before the 40th anniversary of the Second Great Lynn Fire, retired Nashua, N.H. Fire Chief Rick Conway, son of retired Lynn Deputy Fire Chief William Conway, shared a slideshow presentation on the 1981 conflagration to a group of retired and current firefighters from the city and beyond using photos that predominantly came from his father’s collection.
“When the call came in, my father woke me up and said they’re going down to lower Broad Street for a fire,” Rick Conway said. “We sat listening to the scanner in my room and … we both got up, got dressed and even before we were dressed and out of the house, (former District Chief Paul) Kirby had five alarms in and (there were) six in and maybe the seventh before we even got there.”
At around 2 a.m. on Saturday, Nov. 28, 1981, after working a detail at the Porthole Pub on the Lynnway, two police officers spied something amiss a few blocks over on Broad Street.
From the officers’ vantage point, they could see that 264-266 Broad St., otherwise known as the Marshall’s and Hutchinson’s wharf buildings, were on fire. They contacted the Fire Department, which sent Kirby and a few firefighters to the scene. None had any idea of the scope, both physically and historically, of what they were about to witness.
The fire was initially Kirby’s jurisdiction, and the district chief had a reputation for being loath to call in reinforcements. The first thing he did on the scene was head to a nearby alley to assess the building from a different angle, according to former Chief James McDonald, who was on duty as a young firefighter.
The second thing Kirby did was strike the second, third, and fourth alarms.
“(Kirby’s aide Paul Donahue) said ‘what are you talking about?'” McDonald recalled. “Because he really wasn’t one to pull the hook too much.”
At 2:57 a.m., Fire Chief Joseph Scanlon Jr. declared a conflagration. By that point, the fire had taken a second building and it was only getting started.
“To give you an idea of the velocity of this fire and how fast it spread, there were 10 alarms that were struck in 20 minutes,” said McDonald. “That’s pretty unusual.”
Forty years ago, the Second Great Lynn Fire told residents of the city that their legacy of ruination and rebuilding was not over (the city’s first Great Fire was 92 years prior, in 1899). It saw the evidence of a historic industry go up in smoke, and it saw a community rally together in the face of catastrophe. Affecting much of the same area that the first Great Lynn Fire had destroyed, the second Great Fire was in many ways like looking into the past.
“When these buildings were built in the 1800s, land was at a premium, so everything was built closely together,” said Fire Chief Stephen Archer. “More densely-packed together (structures) does mean that firebrands and other heat sources have a much easier time getting from one building to the next, and that’s exactly what happened (in 1981).”
Nearby buildings were powered by a plant that used a leather-strap system, which also accounted for the density of the urban layout.
Joseph Scanlon III, a former Lynn City Councilor whose father was fire chief at the time of the Second Great Fire, attributed some of its intensity to the historical layout of the city. Scanlon believes other key factors are contemporary in nature.
“The conflagration of 1981 was a different set of circumstances,” Scanlon said. “It was unique to the late 20th century.”
In 1981, the city of Lynn was busy with a massive urban revitalization effort. Under the leadership of former Mayor Antonio J. Marino, the city had planned much of its redevelopment effort around Broad and Washington streets ― the city’s former industrial nucleus.
Many of the 18 buildings destroyed in the fire ― the majority of them former shoe factories ― were in different stages of refurbishment.
Lynn Heritage Park and its Visitor Center, where the Lynn Museum is now, were in the planning stages; the plans for North Shore Community College were just beginning to unfold; the Daly Drug building and the Vamp Building were complete.
“There was a lot of momentum,” remembered Scanlon.
Archer recalled the destruction from an intimate angle.
“Some individuals from the city’s Planning Department were down at the fire and they were virtually in tears,” he said. “One of the guys was standing and pointing at the buildings and saying, ‘You see that building? That building was just scheduled to be sold, see that building? That building was under agreement to be renovated.’
“So they had an entire urban redevelopment plan in place ready to go. And then this happened.”
The redevelopment plans were a beacon of hope at the time for the traditionally blue-collar city, but they were also a factor in the intensity of the Second Great Fire. In addition to the sprinkler systems being shut off in a number of the buildings, the structures’ original use as shoe factories presented distinct challenges.
“(They were) just a whole bunch of shoe factories and old brick-and-timber buildings where the timber is completely soaked with machining oils over years and years,” said Lt. Edward Whittier, the department’s historian. “So once they get going and all that stuff starts burning, it’s just a tremendous fire and you can’t stop it.”
Fire spread from building to building not just due to close proximity, but also via the century-plus-old windows.
“Every single one of these window frames is wood and single-pane glass, all the old-style single pane glass,” said McDonald. “So they were cracking and breaking from the heat and the heat was going into the hallway.”
To make matters worse, the blaze was so big by the time more firefighters arrived at the scene that the department could not fight it from all sides in a “surround-and-drown” configuration, according to Whittier.
Ironically, as the affected section of Broad Street was destroyed in the First Great Fire, many of the buildings were retrofitted with extra fire precautions, like indoor fire boxes, in the event of another blaze.
“There was a lot of thought put into rebuilding this area the first time,” said Scanlon. “There was always a concern for the potential of a second large fire there.”
“In terms of fire, you can only minimize the risk,” said Archer. “You can’t eliminate it.”
While there was a detail putting out hot spots in the city until Dec. 21, 1981, the blaze itself was under control at around 5 p.m. on Nov. 28, 15 hours after the first alarm was struck. What it left in its wake was a city with its industrial heart burnt out.
But it was a city determined not to stay down for long.
“I saw that Mayor Marino after the fire said something to the effect of ‘the city is down, but it’s not out,'” Scanlon, a city councilor at the time, recalled. “And actually what he actually said was that it was a ‘minor setback’ and that ‘we will recover.'”
“I really think Mayor Marino’s optimism in leadership at the time had a lot to do with getting the city back on track,” he added.
Scanlon also remembered visits from former Massachusetts Gov. Edward King, as well as former U.S. senators “(Paul) Tsongas and (Edward) Kennedy … Congressman (Nicholas) Mavroules, bringing outside help, Senator Walter Boverini, Speaker (Thomas W.) McGee.”
“Our congressional and state leadership reacted very strongly to help with these issues,” he added. “There was a very concerted effort to help people. It was governmental resources at its best. You know, coming to people’s aid, that’s what government’s supposed to do.”
Former Lynn Community Development Executive Director Edward T. Calnan remembered working with other city planning and development department heads to get President Ronald Reagan to declare the affected section of Lynn a disaster area. Calnan also remembers aid coming in not just locally and federally, but also internationally.
“(The fire) was a national story and then it became an international story,” he said. “We were receiving messages from as far away as Tokyo and Amsterdam .. There were a lot of people, both nationally and from around the world, that would send in donations to the city, which the city used to address the unmet needs of the many households that were driven from their apartments because of the fire.”
Still, even the most optimistic leader could not deny the immense cost.
“We tend to think in terms of real estate when we think of fires, or loss of life from a fire, but people’s economic conditions change too,” Scanlon said. “And really it’s not the owner of the property, it’s a little person who works there.
“And it took a while, but the city did adjust,” he added. “Not everyone’s made whole on these issues, either. That’s what we always lose perspective on. In catastrophes, there are always casualties and they are not always physical.”
Archer said that the city’s resilience was the ultimate factor in its resurgence from the ashes. One of the best examples, he said, was the rebuilt North Shore Community College campus.
“It was not guaranteed that the city would be able to rebound from something like this, and I think we take it for granted but at that time, this was such a dramatic occurrence and such a devastating thing for the city, that it’s not a foregone conclusion that the city will be able to bounce back from this,” he said. “But we did. Officials were saying immediately after this fire ‘we’re going to bounce back, we’re going to rebuild,’ and the city did.”
During Saturday’s event, former Deputy Chief Conway yielded the floor to his son, only chiming in when Rick occasionally asked him for clarification. Like the other retired firemen present, he was there to observe and reflect. However, he did share his thoughts on the blaze in a brief interview.
“I think we did well,” Conway said of his department. “All things considered.”
