Financial Fraud and Arson - Equitable Life Assurance Building - Wall Street Bombing - Painfully Obvious Associations with 9/11

Equitable Life Assurance Building: Jan. 9, 1912 fire and collapse

The Equitable Life Assurance Building was completed in 1870 at 120 Broadway in New York City, New York. At 130 feet (40 m), it is considered by some the world's first skyscraper and was the first office building to feature passenger elevators.[2][3] The architects were Arthur Gilman and Edward H. Kendall, with George B. Post as a consulting engineer and hydraulic elevators made by the Elisha Otis company. The building was destroyed by a fire on January 9, 1912.[4]

The present Equitable Building was completed in 1915 on the same plot, and was designed by Ernest R. Graham & Associates. The massive bulk of the newer building was a major impetus behind the city's 1916 Zoning Resolution.[5]

Equitable Life Assurance building (1889 photo)

circa 1890

General information

Status: Destroyed
Type: Commercial offices
Location: 120 Broadway
New York City, New York
Construction started: 1868
Completed: 1870
Destroyed: 1912
Height: Roof 40 m (130 ft)

Technical details

Floor count: 7
Design and construction: Architect Arthur Gilman and Edward H. Kendall
Structural engineer: George B. Post

References

1. Equitable Life Building (New York City) at SkyscraperPage
2. Gordon Fulton (2010). "Skyscrapers: Chase for the Clouds". The Canadian Encyclopedia.
3. Historica Foundation. http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&Params=A1ARTA0011495. Retrieved 2010-02-05.
4. "The Origins of the Commonplace & Curious in America: Skyscrapers". Magical History Tour. http://magicalhystorytour.blogspot.com/2010/08/skyscrapers.html. Retrieved 13 September 2010.
5. "Heroes of Ground Zero. FDNY A History". PBS WNET. 2002. http://www.pbs.org/wnet/heroes/history3.html. Retrieved 2010-02-04.
Equitable Building, New York City (1915) at Emporis

External links

Equitable Building (1915) at the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission
Equitable Building (1915) at A View on Cities
Equitable Life Building (New York City)


Source: StevenWarRan blog

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Photographer Edward N. Jackson

One figure can help us tie together three notable episodes of American corporate terrorism, ranging from the attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11th, 2001, to a precursor skyscraper building collapse, that of the Equitable Life Assurance Building on January 9, 1912, an event which in both its outline and in many of its details stands eerily as the template for the later New York City disaster.

In between these two structural failures, was the Wall Street bombing of September 16, 1920, which took place in the street out front of the headquarters of J.P. Morgan & Company.

The history of Edward Jackson, as it is found online, is itself an example of an apparent system of information management organized around a government-military-media-university axis. His story is told primarily by his putative biographer, Joseph Caro, whose book, "Edward N. Jackson ~ Prince of News Photography," was supposed to have been released in 2009, but which remains unknown at Amazon.com as of mid-2011.

Caro is reported to be responsible for the major online resource for information about Jackson, a web page "which supports the author's forthcoming book on Eddie Jackson." That information comes from a second source, a web page posted by a Professor of History at Northern Virginia Community College by the name of C.T. Evans. There we also find a link to a third web source, now defunct, but still available at archive.org, which appears to be a graduate thesis by a student at Southern Nazarene University, in Bethany, Oklahoma. An entry at Wikipedia for Jackson seems, for the most part, to be directly lifted from Caro's web site.

In the absence of a more public profile for Jackson, we must consider that each of these three sources carry privileged information, and while none verify the important facts found in the other by which I assemble my argument, they do not contradict each other, and we're left with no option but to take them at their word.

The home page link to Caro's web site on Jackson is broken, but we can go directly to his "Free Lance News" page on the Equitable Building Fire-1912. There, Caro tells us that:

One of Eddie's first free-lance photo opportunities before working for the American Press Association, was the New York Equitable Building eight-alarm fire in the financial district on Pine Street in January, 1912.

And as Caro editorializes:

Eddie Jackson had an instinctive eye for photo composition, as these early pictures taken in the 1912 Equitable Building fire clearly show. With no formal training in photography or composition, Eddie shows us and his photographic peers of the era his ability to construct a photograph to a high dramatic level – even during the excitement of the scene as it unfolds. As Eddie Jackson stated later in life, "a good photograph is worth 10 columns of copy."

Caro does us a service by posting four images taken at the fire and its aftermath. Since none of the dozen or so competing daily newspapers in that era published bylines or personal photo credits for the work appearing in their pages, it would be impossible to reconstruct Jackson's credits today without high-level editorial and archival help.

Each of the four images found on the Edward Jackson page displays evidence of doctoring and manipulation of a type found consistently throughout the image record of September 11th, but that is a technical analysis to be saved for later. The actionable image for my purposes here is the following, which to my knowledge is the product of the single photo opportunity allowed from inside the burned-out building at 120 Broadway. On page 5 of the January 11, 1912, edition, The New York Times published a reverse image of this statue credited to the Brown Bros. agency, a photo which is very difficult to reconcile with Jackson's image. (See: MENACE IN RUINS OF THE EQUITABLE; or, if you subscribe: http://timesmachine.nytimes.com/browser/1912/01/11/P5)

In 1912, Jackson was a 27-year-old from a dirt-poor background in Philadelphia. Caro tells us that, as a child, he and his family were often forced to resort to eating in soup kitchens. Although Jackson had begun apprenticing with a studio photographer at age 15 in Philadelphia, moving with the firm to Atlantic City in 1903, and at some point later to New York City, his status at the time of the Equitable fire was clearly that of a "free lance" photographer. Caro contradicts himself here, telling us first that the Equitable fire was "[o]ne of Eddie's first free-lance photo opportunities before working for the American Press Association," but on his bio page, Caro says Jackson was "work[ing] for the American Press Association in the photo engraving department in 1912 where he also became a free lance news photographer."

In any event, what is clear is that Jackson would have lacked the professional credentials to have gotten through police cordons blocks away, let alone into the Equitable Building itself. It is difficult to find a modern analogy to what the Equitable Building represented in its time – although Fort Knox would be a close second. The Equitable Building was literally a treasure house, being the repository for the equivalent of hundreds of billions of dollars in securities, stocks, bonds and cash; holding the fortunes of the likes of the Harrimans, the Belmonts, the Goulds, Russell Sage, and Thomas Fortune Ryan; as well as the corporate holdings of the Mercantile branch of the Bankers Trust, the Equitable Trust Company, Kuhn, Loeb & Co., William A. Read & Co., and Kountze Bros. bankers. J.P. Morgan had purchased the controlling interest in the Equitable Life Assurance Society in 1909.

The Equitable Building was the most secure building in America. The idea that Jackson could launch an enormously successful career off of his privileged access at this "scene as it unfolds" indicts the system of action photojournalism as participating in a foreknowledged manipulation of events.

His career took off after the Equitable fire. Caro tells us:

Eddie's first foreign assignment as a fledgling photojournalist for the APA was to travel to Panama to photograph the Panama Canal before its official opening in 1914.

Three months before the United States entered World War I (April, 1917), she continued, reluctantly, to have a trade status with Germany and allowed their ships to enter U.S. ports. When the German submarine Deutschland arrived in New London, Conn. on a cold, dark January night in 1917, Eddie 'borrowed' a canoe and paddled around to take his photograph.

In 1915, Jackson was invited by his friend Thomas Alva Edison, newly appointed as President of the Naval Review Board, to document the inspection of a highly secret United States submarine “E-2” in the Brooklyn Navy yard. The United States had not entered WWI and did not want the warring nations to know about the development of submarine capability. Two weeks later, the submarine mysteriously exploded, killing several personnel. Eddie Jackson's clandestine photograph of the U.S. E-2 submarine explosion in dry dock after the explosion that killed several sailors, happened in the battery room that Thomas Edison [had] inspected two weeks earlier. Jackson’s forbidden photograph of the damaged submarine appeared in all of the New York papers.

Many years past the draft age, Jackson joined the Army Signal Corps (reserves) at the age of 32 and reported for training at Camp Alfred Vail in Little Silver, New Jersey on October 22nd, 1917. Due to his extensive photographic experience, he was promoted to 1st Lieutenant and was assigned the title of "Official War Photographer." Several months later, he was selected to be President Woodrow Wilson’s official photographer:

Maybe the most famous picture of the Paris Peace Conference, "The Big Four" (27 May 1919) was taken by Edward N. Jackson, a photographer with the Army Signal Corps and Wilson's official photographer in Europe.

Eddie Jackson in his army uniform

Returning from France a seasoned, recognized professional news photographer, Jackson was offered many employment offers. He decided to work with Joseph Medill Patterson and his cousin Robert R. McCormick, who were co-publishers of the Chicago Tribune and wanted to start a New York tabloid newspaper, the New York Daily News. Launched on June 26, 1919 with Edward N. Jackson as their lead photographer, the publishers wanted large and prominent photographs of city news, entertainment and sports events and local city coverage, all of which was assigned to Jackson. The New York Daily News is today the sixth largest newspaper in the country and has won ten Pulitzer prizes.

"A photographer's photographer": quote by First Lady Mrs. Warren G. Harding who stated the Edward Jackson photograph of her was "the best photo ever taken." The photo ran on the entire front page of the February 5, 1921 New York Daily News.

The unnamed writer from Southern Nazarene University in Bethany, Oklahoma, whose work, tentatively titled, "20s & 30s Tabloid Journalism - Mankind's Obsession for Sensationalism," appears four times at archive.org, from Nov. 17, 2007 to Oct. 5, 2008, takes over from here:

One of the first exclusive picture opportunities for the tabloid occurred on September 16, 1920. Captain Edward N. Jackson of the Daily News was on a routine assignment in Wall Street when a dynamite bomb in a horse-drawn wagon went off, killing thirty people and injuring a hundred. Jackson went to work, capturing the best pictures of the disaster. Other photographers soon arrived on the scene, but by then the police had already drawn lines about the explosion area. Jackson consequently was the only journalist to escape with on-the-scene pictures of the victims and first aid work. In cases such as this, history influenced the paper to cover the story, and the paper’s pictorial coverage augmented history by supplying pictures that would have otherwise never existed.

That Jackson could have been at this locale by luck, or chance, or happenstance is an absurdity. The 1920 Wall Street bombing has all the earmarks of a politically motivated catalyzing event – and not one likely to benefit the BOLSHEVIST OR GUILDSMAN, let alone the anarchists, communists, or militant socialists.

Chose your boogeyman via the New York Times:

REV. D.D. IRVINE'S THEORY.; Says "Vatican Created Atmosphere" That Caused Bomb to be Thrown.

THINKS GERMANS SET BLAST; HEARD THREAT; Teuton in Wall Street Uttered Warning Just After the Tragedy, Writer Says.

DENY UNION MEN SET WALL ST. BOMB; Federal Agents and Police Discredit Theory That Labor Fight Caused Tragedy.

RED PLOT SEEN IN BLAST;

BANKERS THREATENED IN RED PUBLICATION

PLANS SEDITION LAW TEST.; Seymour Stedman Speech to Fores Issue In Kentucky.

LEE SAYS EXPLOSION WAS AN ACCIDENT; Socialist Asserts His Belief That Bomb Story Is a Capitalistic Invention.

Of course, on the 17th, the Times reported that EXPLOSIVE STORES ALL ACCOUNTED FOR,

but on September 20th the lead story becomes EXPLOSIVES FOUND TO BE MISSING IN HUNT FOR BOMB PLOT CLUE;

Did they forget what they published on September 15?

FEEL DU PONT BLAST.; 3,000 Pounds of Powder Shake Wide Region in Pennsylvania.

Or that on June 13, 1915, General T. Coleman DU PONT BUYS EQUITABLE LIFE; Gets 502 of Society's Total of 1,000 Shares for More Than $2,510,000.

New-York Tribune., September 17, 1920

Explosives Expert Declares Blast Was No Accident

[page 5, Columns 1 & 2]

Investigation Eliminates Licensed Wagons of Two Concerns, Only Ones With Right to Haul Dynamite

An investigation into all deliveries of dynamite made here recently was begun immediately after the explosion yesterday by the Bureau of Fire Prevention of the Fire Department.

Twenty inspectors were detailed to the work of checking up deliveries and the movements of dynamite wagons under Dr. William F. Doyle, chief of the bureau, and John F. Dixon, chief inspector of combustibles.

The inquiry resulted in eliminating the E. I. du Pont de Nemours Company's truck from any possible responsibility for the explosion. At the same time the only other legitimate dealer licensed to deliver the explosive was eliminated.

It resulted also in the statement being made that it was unlikely that a surreptitious shipment or delivery was the cause, as this practice does not obtain, owing to the stringency of the regulations governing the handling of explosives.

Explosives Trucks Bonded

The Dupont Company is licensed and bonded to deliver dynamite with an electric truck. This was in its garage at the time of the explosion and had not made a delivery below Sixteenth Street yesterday, according to both officials of the company and the word of inspectors. The vehicle which may have contained the explosive and was destroyed was horse drawn.

The only one other dealer in dynamite who also is licensed to sell and deliver the explosive in New York City is Carl H. Dittmar, of 102 West 130th Street. He operates two horse-drawn vehicles. Neither of these had been below Forty-eighth Street during the day, inspectors were told.

The Du Pont Company has two trucks, but only one is operated at a time, as only one is bonded. The other is kept for emergency reasons and is out of commission at present, it was said at the company's office in the Equitable Building.

C. C. Moore, an official of the company, said the truck had made no deliveries below Sixteenth Street during the day and was in its garage at the time of the blast. Chief Inspector Dixon said it was unlikely that the explosion could have been caused by a surreptitious shipment of dynamite, as contractors must make a sworn statement daily of the amount on hand. Each stick of dynamite is numbered and the magazines are inspected daily.

Check Kept on Explosives

All blasting is done by licensed men and a check is kept upon the explosives. There is no such thing as an attempt to evade the laws governing their sale and delivery, according to Dixon.

Dixon, who is the Fire Department expert on explosives, said that if all of the experts in the country were brought here, in his opinion, not even three of them would be able to agree as to the form of explosive used and the quantity.

"I do not think it was an accident," he said, after his inspection of the scene.

The bureau turned over window sash weights and other pieces of metal found to the Police Department.

Supposedly, the bomb sent metal projectiles through windows 32 stories up, but it couldn't even blow up a goddamn horse.

The Wall Street bombing slipped down the memory hole for one reason: it was no good as manufactured reality.

Do I need to make the painfully obvious associations with 9/11?

My 16,963-word transcript of reporting on the bombing, in the New-York Tribune., September 17, 1920

Posted by stevenwarran at 8/17/2011 01:51:00 PM

Photographer Edward N. Jackson


Friday, September 09, 2011

Just Think of it Like a Nancy Drew Mystery

THE WILLIAM GIBLIN RESCUE NARRATIVE:

Basically, just an incomplete news archive, but I'm tired of doing all the work and letting you just sit there.

As a fundamental point, I would agree, that the conception and magnitude of the false September 11th narrative will rationally continue to work its magic for the vast segment of human consciousness in this alignment, in just the manner that Goebbels articulated as "The Big Lie." But for the earlier 1912 Equitable storyline, we have underdeveloped Edward Bernays types working alongside men with little press passes stuck in the silk brims of their hats.

It is so stupid, and so contradictory, it will cause you to awaken with such a snap you'll need a chiropractic adjustment.

Just Think of it Like a Nancy Drew Mystery
____________________________________________________________________

Science News / April 5, 1986

The first skyscraper - new theory that Home Insurance Building was not the first

by Ivars Peterson

The First Skyscraper

When was the skyscraper born? Which building has the right to be called the first skyscraper? These questions surfaced at a recent meeting in Chicago. Convened earlier this year to commemorate a hundred years of skyscraper construction, the Second Century of the Skyscraper conference may actually have come several years too late.

For decades, the nine-story Home Insurance Building in Chicago held the title. Completed in 1885, it was, many people claimed, the first building in which a skeleton of steel columns and beams rather than massive masonry walls keep the structure from collapsing. In this case, lighter masonry walls were "hung," almost like curtains, from the steel framework.

Engineer William LeBaron Jennings was credited with this innovation. It was a major step, as one historian puts it, in the conversion of buildings from stone-armored crustaceans to thin-skinned vertebrates.

This skeletal-frame, curtain-wall type of construction is found in practically all tall buildings now standing. In many cases, the building is little more than a framework covered with glass.

Architecture historians, however, are beginning to find that the Home Insurance Building's claim to fame is probably unjustified. Contemporary records show that there was nothing particularly noteworthy about the building when it was constructed, and later evidence reveals that a steel framework alone did not support the building. Heavy masonry walls still played an important role.

"In my opinion," says Gerald R. Larson, architecture professor at the University of Cincinnati, "the Home Insurance Building was not the first of a new type of building." It wasn't even Chicago's tallest building when it was finished, he says.

Then how did the Home Insurance Building gain its reputation? The answer may lie in a bitter patent dispute. In 1888, a Minneapolis architect named Leroy S. Buffington was granted a patent on the idea of building skeletal-frame tall buildings. He even proposed the construction of a 28-story "cloud-scraper" – a notion mocked by the architectural press of the time as impractical and ludicrous.

Nevertheless, Buffington brought the potential of the iron skeletal frame to the attention of the national architectural and building communities. Architects and engineers began using the idea, which in primitive form had been around for decades.

To break the patent and avoid paying royalties, powerful Chicago architects started a campaign to discredit Buffington and to prove that his ideas were not original. They settled on the Home Insurance Building as an example showing that iron frameworks had been used before the patent was granted.

"It was a campaign of 'the big lie,'" says Larson, and it succeeded in discrediting Buffington. Buffington later damaged his own cause by forging dates on his drawings to show that they predated 1885.

When the Home Insurance Building was demolished in 1931, a special committee of engineers studied how the building had been constructed. Looking at just a few of the building's features, the committee decided that a skeletal frame had been used.

This sanctified the building's title as the first skyscraper, and few questioned the designation. Almost every historical account that mentions skyscrapers cites this building. But the new evidence suggests that the panel members ignored features that would have weakened this claim.

Moreover, some historians are now moving away from the idea that only the type of construction determines whether a building qualifies as a skyscraper. The term "skyscraper" (referring to any tall building) was in use in Chicago before the Home Insurance Building had been conceived, says Larson. Unfortunately, many references still list 1889 articles in the Chicago Tribune and in ENGINEERING NEWS as the word's first appearances in print.

"In my view, we can no longer argue that the Home Insurance Building was the first skyscraper," says Carl W. Condit, now retired from Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., and author of several books on Chicago architecture. "The claim rests on an unacceptably narrow idea of what constitutes a high-rise commercial building," he says.

Historians have tended to pay too much attention to structure and form and too little to factors like the essential roles of elevators and adequate plumbing, heating and lighting systems, says Condit. Without these utilities, tall buildings would be uninhabitable, and builders couldn't demand premium rents for penthouse views.

Most of the inventions needed for a livable tall building date back to the late 18th and early 19th centuries. They were improved and came together in the great building boom of the second half of the 19th century in cities like New York and Chicago. The invention and improvement of the elevator was one key element in this reaching for the sky.

"If there is a building in which all these technical factors – structural system, elevator, utilities – converge at the requisite level of maturity," argues Condit, "it's the Equitable Life Assurance Building in New York." Completed in 1870, the building rose 7-1/2 stories, twice the height of its neighbors. To lighten the building and keep costs down, engineer George B. Post used a primitive type of skeletal frame in its construction. A great fire destroyed the building in 1912.

But the choice is controversial. "It depends entirely on the criteria that you choose – what you're looking at," says Tom Peters of Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. The importance of the Home Insurance Building, he says, has clearly been blown out of proportion. But pinpointing any other building would probably be just as doubtful. A complex evolutionary process involving many stages led to today's skyscrapers.

Condit agrees. "It really is very difficult to establish such a thing," he says. "I can remember when I was in grade school, we were taught that the Renaissance began in 1453 with the fall of Constantinople. All of a sudden, everybody woke up and said, 'Now we have a Renaissance.' History is just too complicated for that kind of assertion."

"The relative value we assign to various developments depends entirely on what preoccupies us at the moment," says Peters. "That is why history is continually being rewritten." He adds, "History is not just an amusing pastime when you have nothing else to do. It is actually an analytical tool to understand the problems that we have today."

The engineering curriculum has room for history, says Peters. "The basis of structural engineering has always been analysis, but that process is now being taken over by computer programs." That gap can be filled by teaching engineers to design holistically, he says. In this approach, an understanding of history is an important element.

Peters heads a committee for the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, based at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pa. This committee is compiling a book outlining various aspects of the history of tall buildings. "It should show engineers who are attracted to it that a historical perspective is also a way of understanding current problems," he says.

The history of tall buildings is more than part of the history of technology. It includes the history of science, architecture, economics, planning, law and sociology. "It's a case study that transcends traditional boundaries between disciplines," says Peters. Such border crossings often lead to exciting new insights.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1200/is_v129/ai_4501450/

HIS ILION FRIENDS REJOICE OVER ESCAPE OF
WILLIAM GIBLIN WHO WAS IN GRAVE PERIL DURING THE FIRE IN THE EQUITABLE LIFE ASSURANCE BUILDING IN NEW YORK CITY

Ilion, Jan 9, 1912 - Through the kindness of Editor John Crowley of Little Falls, word reached the office of John A. Giblin early this morning, telling of the fire in the Equitable Building, at 120 Broadway, in which are the offices of the Mercantile Safe and Deposit Company of which Mr. Giblin's brother, William, is president, and also telling of the escape from death of Mr. Giblin.

Later these reports were supplemented by reports from the Utica newspaper offices and by telephone from New York, which were more reassuring of Mr. Giblin's safety. Early this afternoon a telegram was received from President Giblin, in which he stated he was at the Hudson Street Hospital and suffering from exposure. President Giblin is one of Ilion's young men who has made good in financial circles in New York City rapidly, rising from an obscure position with the company to its head, within a very few years, and that his life was saved is something his Ilion friends have to be thankful for. He is a brother of John A., Michael and Miss Katherine Giblin of this village, Frank T. of Utica and Mrs. J.J. Raleigh of Syracuse, and Miss Gertrude Giblin of Tarrytown. His mother, Mrs. M. Giblin, lives on West Street, this village.

GIBLIN REPORTED IN GOOD CONDITION
AT NEW YORK HOSPITAL

Former Utica and Ilion Man Underwent Terrifying Experience

MORE DETAILS OF HIS RESCUE

Fireman James Dunn Disobeyed Orders and Saved President of Mercantile Deposit and Another from Death

New York, January 10, 1912 – William Giblin, president of the Mercantile Safe Deposit Company, who underwent such a terrifying experience in the Equitable Building fire yesterday morning and whose rescue was one of the most marvelous pieces of work ever accomplished by firemen, was reported in good condition at the Hudson Street Hospital this morning.

The only danger to be feared is pneumonia. However, no symptoms had been discovered, and as Mr. Giblin is a vigourous young man, it is hoped that he may escape.

Equitable Assurance Building 1912 NYC

The rescue of Mr. Giblin was dramatic. The patient, who had looked at death in the treasure vault, now realizes the whole extent of his luck. Further details of the discovery of the imprisoned men, the work to save them and the incidents following the rescue became known today.

GIBLIN'S RESCUE THRILLING ACT OF GREAT FIRE

Former Ilion Man, Imprisoned in a Vault of the Burning Equitable, Had Narrow Escape from Death – Rescuer Was Ordered to Leave

January 10, 1912 – One of the most thrilling incidents of the great fire in New York, which destroyed the Equitable Building yesterday, was the rescue of William Giblin, president of the Mercantile Safe Deposit Company, which had its offices and vaults in the north end of the ground floor. Mr. Giblin is the brother of Frank T. Giblin of 58 Rutger Street, Utica, and John Giblin of Ilion, where he lived until about ten years ago. He has other relatives and friends in Utica and Ilion.

Mr. Giblin was notified of the fire by a clerk in the Breslin Hotel, says the Times, and arrived on the scene in a taxicab at 6:30 a.m. Despite the objections of the police he made his way to the Cedar street entrance of the burning building. There is a heavy steel door at the entrance which locked with a spring lock. Mr. Giblin unlocked this door and forgot to take the key out of the keyhole. A watchman whose name Mr. Giblin did not even know, accompanied him, and the door swung shut on the two and locked itself.

It was dark on the ground floor, and Mr. Giblin and the watchman groped their way to the front of the building. No one missed them, apparently, for Cedar street at that time in the morning was so dark that forms could be distinguished only vaguely, and the dangling, shining keys in the blackened steel door were forgotten or not even seen. There was little fire on the ground floor, but of smoke there was a great deal, and Mr. Giblin and his aide reached the Broadway windows with difficulty.

Prisoner in a Vault

Within fifteen minutes after Mr. Giblin had entered the building... the ground floor was a mass of flames. Giblin, however, did not see for he had stepped into the big vault big enough to conceal a company of men, and the door was keeping both flames and smoke from him. He was busily engaged looking for the papers which he had come to save. It was only when he had obtained what he wanted that he opened the door of the vault to retrace his steps. A rush of smoke almost overcame him instantly. He pulled the door behind him and realized that he was a prisoner. He glanced about for the watchman but did not see him. He knew then that his life too, was only a matter of time, and he waited for that time.

The rumor spread outside that a well dressed man who had entered the building had perished in the flames. Some said that his name was Giblin, but the busy fire fighters soon forgot this incident, for there were other things which kept them alert every moment.

Reporter Discovers Signal

The story of the rescue as told by the Sun follows:

At 7:30 am, a white pocket handkerchief which was being waved by President William Giblin of the Mercantile Safe Deposit Company, between the iron bars of the gate of the Broadway entrance to the deposit company's offices in the sunken ground floor two steps down from the Broadway sidewalk, attracted the attention of a reporter, who was standing with the Rev. Father McGean, a chaplain of the Fire Department, across the street from the burning building.

"There's somebody alive over there in the basement floor, father," the reporter said. Father McGean had heard no cries from the basement floor, but he had been hearing groans from floors above. He and Chief Kenlon ran across through the smoke and spray together. The stone lintels over doorways were crashing to the street all around the grill work opening. Already the dark opening was beginning to be framed with a thick picture frame of ice. And for a background was a dull glare as the fire ate outward toward where the president of the compnay crouched against the locked grating beside Watchman William Campion, who was dead, and Watchman William Sheehan, whose right arm was pinned against the dead man by the fallen ceiling timbers that had killed Campion.

Three Men Sawed at the Steel Bars

Fireman James Dunn of Engine 6 disobeyed orders and saved President Giblin and Sheehan. When Father McGean had heard Mr. Giblin's confession and had been pulled away from the grill by Acting Chief Devanny, a watchman named Peck came up with two hacksaws which he had found at 115 Broadway. Peck started in with one of the saws on the bars of the door and dropped the other. President Giblin reached through the bars and got hold of the saw and started to try to help Peck cut the inch and one-half bars. Mr. Giblin worked for ten minutes or until the falling water had so chilled his hands that he had to drop the saw. Peck's saw broke.

There was a wait of fifteen minutes while no one came near the iron door where the dead man stood frozen to the bars and the president of the company and Watchman Sheehan called on God for help. Then Fireman Jim Dunn of Engine 6 jumped up to the grating. Jim Dunn had a saw and started in to cut the bars.

Somebody, a superior officer at any rate, ran up to Dunn through the falling spray and ordered Dunn to get away from the building, where new big chunks of stone were smashing down more frequently.

"These two fellows are alive!" yelled Dunn to his chief. "I'm going to saw them out."

"Stay, then, you fool," cried the chief and got out of range of the falling stones.

Jim Dunn Finished the Job

For a long time then – Sheehan says it seemed about an hour, but it probably was much less – Jim Dunn sawed away. While he was working Commissioner Johnson personally directed that a stream be sent in through the grating to keep back the fire, which was creeping streetward toward where Giblin and Sheehan stood, now too cold and weak to help. The stream struck Giblin and for an instant pressed him back forcibly against the debris that held him close to the door. And during the rest of the time the fireman was sawing the bars the stiff spray alternately was hitting Dunn and Giblin and coating them with ice.

Dunn got through a bar and found that even when it was pried to one side, the imprisoned men could not be pulled out to the sidewalk. He patiently started at another. And after an hour and a quarter of steady sawing got two bars cut through. Then he left the grill and for another ten or fifteen minutes Giblin and Sheehan waited for him to come back.

The Living Out, the Dead Left

Dunn had left them only to get a crowbar to pry the cut bars aside. He stretched the bars to either side and reached in and got out first Mr. Giblin and then Sheehan. Campion evidently was dead and was left standing there. All forenoon and until dusk, through the spray two white blurs might be seen where his hands stuck outward through the bars.

Dunn, Father McGean and Commisioner Johnson carried Giblin and Sheehan across the street to the boiler room of the Trinity Building where Dr. Thatcher Worthern and Dr. Garrett of the Hudson street Hospital and Dr. Girdansky of Gouverneur Hospital had established a relief station. In the hot boiler room the two men were stripped, rubbed down and drank a stimulant. The clothes of Giblin had to be cut to get them off because of the coating of ice. Fire Commissioner Johnson worked his own arms to break the coating of ice on his own coat sleeves, drew off his coat and then pulled off his sweater and drew it over the head of Mr. Giblin.

Mr. Giblin at the Hudson street hospital was found to be suffering only from exposure and will be able to go home soon unless a heavy cold or pneumonia results.

Sheehan suffered a broken right arm, the arm that had been pinned against Campion, which was set after he had recovered somewhat from his exposure and shock.

A dispatch from New York today stated that Mr. Giblin was much improved this morning and left the hospital for his home.

POLICEMEN AND DETECTIVES GUARD THE SECURITIES BURIED IN THE FIRE RUINS

Streams of Water Still Playing Upon the Smouldering Timbers of Wrecked Equitable Building.

LABORERS FIGHT WAY TO VAULTS TO ASCERTAIN THEIR CONDITION.

All the Safes, Holding Paper Worth Half a Billion Dollars or More, Are Believed to Be Intact

Body of Battalion Chief Walsh Not Yet Recovered

New York, January 10, 1912 – Half a billion dollars or more in securities lie on the glowing ruins of the Equitable Building to-day guarded by 140 policemen and detectives.

The bulk of the Gould, Harriman, Ryan and Belmont estates and the vast securities of the Equitable Life Assurance Society are locked in the massive steel vaults, buried beneath tons of debris.

With streams still playing upon the smouldering ruins, laborers are fighting their way to the vaults to ascertain their condition.

All the vaults are believed to be intact.

A superficial examination made today indicated that the vaults of the Mercantile Safe Deposit were intact.

The ruins still hold the body of Battalion Chief William Walsh, two watchmen employed by the company are also missing and are believed to have perished in the fire, in which six lives were lost.

Because $50,000,000 to $75,000,000 in collateral of Wall street loans are locked in the vaults, the governing committee of the Stock Exchange announced today another postponement of one day in deliveries.

The records of the Harriman Railroad lines, showing the names and addresses....

BLAZE NOW CONFINED TO RUINS IN CELLAR

A white, hot furnace still glowed fiercely in the cellars of the ruined Equitable Building at daybreak to-day, resisting all the efforts of the firemen to drown out the flames. Chief Kenton doubted whether the fire would be completely extinguished before night.

The blaze is now confined, however, to the heaped up ruins in the cellars, for above the first story nothing is left save the granite walls, bearded with great encrustrations of gleaming ice.

Pilasters and ornaments bear coatings of ice, which in some places is two feet thick, while the surface of Broadway and the other streets surrounding the ruins are sheathed with ice to a depth of from one to two feet.

All night long, under the glare of three powerful search lights from the Singer Tower, ice-covered firemen poured in streams from twenty nozzles.

Until the flames are completely extinguished little effort can be made to reach the vaults where securities and papers valued at $1,500,000,000 are stored.

Rigid Police Line Maintained

A rigid police line is maintained on all sides of the burned building and the cordon covers so wide an area that the thousands of sightseers, who flocked to the scene are unable to obtain more than a glimpse of the structure.

In addition to the established lid maintained by the police, 100 policemen and 40 detectives are assigned to the task of preventing the theft of any money or securities still in the building.

There were no additions to the list of casualties during the early morning hours to-day. The official police blotter gives six dead, two missing and twenty-three injured.

One of the dead is still unidentified, and the body of William J. Walsh battalion chief of the fire department, has not yet been recovered.

The body of William Campion, captain of the watchmen for the Mercantile Safe Deposit Company, was visible at daybreak through the iron grating at the entrance of the company's door.

The other three dead are Joseph Conti, Sazzio and Massena Fratta, all employees of the restaurant where the blaze started.

The missing men are two watchmen employed by the safe deposit company.

Tenants in New Quarters

Most of the 137 tenants of the burned building were established in new headquarters in near-by skyscrapers to-day. The Equitable Life executives found themselves amply provided for on three floors of the City Investing Building, a block away. ....

No Definite Action at Once

A statement by E. E. Rittenhouse, conservation commissioner for the Equitable, says that no definite action will be taken for a few days.

"As a matter of fact," he says, "there has been some talk of late to the effect that a life insurance company ought not to have a big building. Anyhow, no definite decision has yet been made."

In the present condition of the real estate market in the Wall street section it may prove that the interests of the policyholders would be best served by selling the present site and erecting another building on a less expensive frontage.

Fire officials believe that early estimates of the loss from the fire will be largely discounted. They believe that practically all of the securities and papers of real value are safe in the vaults. As for the building itself, although it cost millions to construct, yet its loss has actually added to the value of the most valuable block in New York.

History of the New York Fire Department
1906 to 1915

"Battalion Chief William J. Walsh was killed when the floors of the Equitable Building collapsed. He led a group of fourteen firemen up a ladder to the fourth floor to search for victims that were trapped. Several men had already jumped from the upper floors. Once the fourth floor was searched the men started for the third floor. The fire was licking the fourth floor, as there was also a rumbling sound as of crashing floors overhead. Chief Walsh’s eye caught something on the floor, to make him loiter a second while his men were on the way down. He told his men “Go ahead Boys, I can take care of myself”. There was a crash, followed by many other crashes and seething and whipping flames, which made the fourth floor a furnace within a few minutes.

Walsh was last seen half way down on stairs between the fourth and third floors. Whether he tripped and fell or whether a part of the upper floor overhead fell on him will perhaps never be known. The other fourteen men escaped from a third floor window. He was married and had a daughter. The Equitable Building fire was an $18 million dollar loss and six killed. Firemen with hacksaws, cut for two hours trying to free workers behind iron bars. Because of this, a heavy rescue company would be organized with special tools in 1915. In addition, it was first time Brooklyn Companies responded into Manhattan to help put a fire out. (Source: New York Times, Jan. 10, 1912, LODD 165)" - http://www.nyfd.com/history/LODD1906-1915.pdf

Related Links

Heroes of Ground Zero. FDNY A History

New York City Disaster

FDNY - Fire Department New York City Unofficial home page

Fire Disasters:What Have We Learned?

Wall Street Architecture

120 Broadway - Historic Buildings In The World Trade Center Vicinity

The Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States

The Birth of the Skyscraper

Reproduced by Aileen Carney Sweeney, whose great, great grandmother, Bridget (McDonough) Carney was the sister of William Giblin's mother, Mary Elizabeth (McDonough) Giblin. Source of information: Newspaper Articles located in the Ilion Public Library Historical Room.

William Giblin (1869-1944) married Kathleen Carmody Giblin (1875-1923). Their daughter was Kathleen Giblin Balet (1907-1994). His parents, Michael J. Giblin [Dec 28, 1825 - April 15, 1893] and Mary Elizabeth (McDonough) Giblin [Feb 2, 1834 - Oct 30, 1918], West Street, Ilion, NY had 11 children: Mary, Gertrude, Kate (aka Catherine), John A., Frank T., William, Michael, George J., Ellen, Genevieve, and Richard.

March 1, 2004

http://www.oocities.org/ilionny/giblin/william_giblin_rescue.html


New York, NY Equitable Building Fire, Jan 1912

Posted November 11th, 2007 by Stu Beitler

Equitable Building 1906 Equitable Building Fire Equitable Building Fire - Rescue of William Giblin Equitable Building Firemen Fighting the Fire Equitable Building Fire Equitable Fire (thanks to Mark Frazier) New York City NY Equitable Fire 1-9-1912.

$18,000,000 EQUITABLE BUILDING DESTROYED BY FATAL FIRE

Fast Sweeping Blaze in New York's Financial Zone Razes City's First Skyscraper Causing Loss of Life.

ONE BILLION DOLLARS IN SECURITIES BURIED

Chief Kenlon Says Huge Steel Boxes Are Intact and Contents Doubtless Unharmed - Building Cost About $9,000,000, but Equitable Considered it Valueless and Fixes Loss at $300,000 - Tenants, Whose Books Are Destroyed, Hunt New Offices - Thrilling Scenes at Worst Fire in Financial District

New York. -- The Equitable Life Assurance Society's block-square building at No. 120 Broadway was destroyed by a fire that caused the death of at least six persons, tied up the business of the Stock Exchange and several banking houses and gave the Fire Department of the city the most strenuous task of the last half century.

Fire Chief KENLON declared, after a late inspection, that the huge vaults of the Equitable and those of the Mercantile Safe Deposit Company are intact and that their contents, estimated at fully $1,500,000,000 in stocks, bonds, negotiable securities and cash, jewels and valuable articles, are secure from any damage.

Those who met death in the fire were:

FIRE BATTALION CHIEF WILLIAM WALSH, forty-five years old, veteran hero of many fires.
WILLIAM CAMPION, a watchman, employed by the Mercantile Safe Deposit Company.
FRANK J. NIEDER, also employed by the Mercantile.
JOHN SAZZI, a kitchen helper in the Cafe Savarin.
JOHN CONTI, also employed in the Cafe Savarin.
MESSINA FRATTI, employed in the building.

The origin of the fire was investigated by Fire Marshall PRIAL, but not definitely ascertained beyond the fact that the flames were first seen in the rear of the Cafe Savarin, where several bakers were at work. The elevator shafts acted as chimneys, conveying the fire directly to the roof, the flames mushrooming on several floors so that in less than half an hour from the time the first alarm was turned in at 5:34 A. M., the interior of the entire building was in flames.

The value of the property destroyed, from the point of view of cost, was at least $10,000,000, but owing to the fact that the building itself, which cost between $8,000,000 and $9,000,000 to construct, has not been carried as an asset on the books of the Equitable Society for the last three years the estimate of loss to property is reduced to between $1,000,000 and $1,500,000. The land occupied by the Equitable Building, in the view of experts, will be intrinsically more valuable without the massive old-fashioned structure. A huge skyscraper will undoubtedly take the place of the building which has been destroyed.

Chief WALSH died carried down by a collapsing floor as he was leading his men upward toward the Lawyers' Club rooms.

In their struggle to obtain mastery of the flames the firemen were handicapped by the bitterly cold weather, the heavy gale that prevailed and low water pressure.

Every available piece of fire apparatus in the city was brought to the scene of the fire, in response to the "borough alarm," the call which always indicates a catastrophe. Every fire company in Manhattan, below Fifty-ninth street was rushed downtown, the companies above them being moved down to take their places, while practically all the available apparatus in Brooklyn was summoned and raced, across the Brooklyn Bridge, the north roadway of which was closed to all other traffic. It was the most serious fire in a financial way, New York had ever known.

The most thrilling incident of the early stages of the fire was the killing of three men who had fled to the roof to escape the fire that was burning fiercely beneath them. They were seen on a cupola on the Cedar street side of the building just when dawn was breaking. Firemen in the street yelled to them not to jump, and hurried away for scaling ladders. When they returned the men still were there, holding out their arms appealingly to those in the street below. The firemen started up the Cedar street side of the building on scaling ladders, and were nearing the men when gushes of flames burst from the windows and forced them to retreat. Almost simultaneously the section of the roof back of the three men collapsed and went down into the building. The flames then gushed up from the furnace a block in size. The heat was so terrific the three men could not stand it. They knelt on the coping, prayed for a few seconds, and two of them leaped outward. They landed on the pavement in Cedar street and death was instant. The third man stood up on the coping, staggered, fell backward and plunged head-long into the volcano that raged beneath him in the interior of the building.

WILLIAM GIBLIN, president of the Mercantile Safe Deposit Company, was one of those injured. He narrowly escaped death. When the news of the fire reached him in his home he was sitting up with his wife, who is critically ill. Hurrying to the Equitable building he entered one of the vaults, containing $6,000,000 of securities, for the purpose of carrying them out. He was accompanied into the vault by one of his men. The keys to the vault were left outside when it had been unlocked. While the men were in the vault the door was shoved to by falling wreckage, the spring lock was snapped and the two men found themselves prisoners with the fire above them and the wreckage piling up around their prison. When finally they were discovered it was impossible to get the door open. GIBLIN and the other man pleaded with the firemen to hurry and save them from suffocation. It was not until several of the bars of the vault had been sawed through with a hacksaw and then pulled outward by many firemen manning ropes that had been attached to the several bars that GIBLIN was released. Meantime Father McGEAN a chaplain of the Fire Department, had knelt near the men and prayed for their deliverance. GIBLIN was hurried to a hospital. The man who was with him in the vault was suffocated and was dead when carried out.

A grisly token of the toll of death taken by the fire was in plain view all day in the frozen doorway of the Mercantile Safe Deposit Company. A man's hands, covered with ice, clutching the bars of the door that had stood so long as an advertisement of the strength of the company's vaults. They belonged to WILLIAM CAMPION, a watchman, who met his death while he, and President GIBLIN of the company, were trying to escape, having locked themselves in by mistake.

It is practically impossible to exaggerate the enormous property losses involved in this fire. Aside from the valuable building, and the contents of the many richly furnished offices, not to speak of innumerable law libraries belonging to tenants, there were lost the great law libraries of the Equitable Society and the Lawyers' Club, both of which were numbered among the finest collections of legal records in the country. All of the 1,600,000 record cards of the Equitable Life Assurance Society, which were kept in thin steel cabinets in the secretary's office, have been destroyed. But fortunately a duplicate set of these cards was kept in the Hazen building. It will take five years to copy off another duplicate list, however.

The business of Wall Street was tied up for hours. The fire threatened early in the morning to sweep across narrow streets and seize upon the Chase National Bank, the Clearing House, the American Exchange Bank and the American Surety Co., building.

E. E. Rittenhouse, of the Equitable Company, said that the securities in their own vaults amounted to between $250,000,000 and $300,000,000. The cash in the vaults consists of $4,000,000, belonging to the Equitable Trust Co., and $6,000,000 belonging to the Mercantile Trust Co.

Among these buried securities are what is said to be the bulk of the Belmont and the E. H. Harriman estates. Here is the list:

Gould Estate, $100,000,000.
Equitable Trust Co., $50,000,000.
Harriman estate, $125,000,000, in the Mercantile Trust Co.'s vaults.
Thomas F. Ryan, $100,000,000.
August Belmont, $150,000,000, in the Belmont vaults.
Kuhn, Loeb & Co., $100,000,000.
Kountze Bros., $10,000,000.
Wm. A. Read & Co., $25,000,000.
Mercantile Trust Co., $70,000,000.

The Cranbury Press New Jersey 1912-01-12

New York, NY Equitable Building Fire, Jan 1912

In January of 1912, a fire spread through the dumbwaiter elevator system of the Equitable Building on Pine Street. Eight companies fought the fire for a half an hour before Chief John Kenlon ordered everyone out of the building. Additional companies arrived from Brooklyn, and while firefighters attempted to rescue people stranded on the roof, the building collapsed, dooming the victims on the roof as well as two firemen. Meanwhile, it took an hour and a half and fifteen saw blades to cut through the steel bars that sealed three men in the building's basement. By the time they were released, one of the men had submitted to the smoke.

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/heroes/history3.html