Magazine - Summer '99



		PIECES OF THE PAST THE GREAT FIRE of 1916 Twice in the history of Washington College fire has disrupted campus life. The burning of the original College building in 1827 delivered a near-death blow to the budding institution. On a wintry night nearly 90 years later, disaster struck again. It couldn’t have come at a worse time.
A light snow was falling upon the already whitened ground in the early morning hours of Sunday, January 16, 1916, when James Lecates—the watchman of the Pennsylvania Railroad yard—spied an orange glow in the direction of Washington College. Sensing calamity, Lecates sounded an engine whistle that tore the silence over sleeping Chestertown. About the same time, William J. Wallace, president of the College sophomore class, was awake in his Middle Hall room helping a sick roommate when, looking out a window, he saw flames leaping from the rear side of the northern wing of William Smith Hall.			Wallace’s shouts woke everyone in Middle Hall and other students quickly roused classmates and professors living in East and West halls. Within half an hour a crowd of students and townspeople—alerted by the locomotive whistle and the subsequent ringing of church bells—had gathered around Smith Hall. Flames, which apparently had originated in the janitor’s basement utility room, spread throughout the structure so quickly that by the time the volunteer fire company reached campus, Smith Hall was nearly fully enveloped. Some students tried connecting the fire hoses in Middle, East and West halls in order to direct water onto the blaze, but they were unable to coax anything from the pipes. Dragging the hose to the town water plugs at the foot of the campus, students were dismayed to discover that the fittings were not compatible. (CONTINUED ON p. 17)
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