Photograph from the George McCue Collection, The State Historical Society of Missouri–Research Center–St. Louis
It’s 3:20 p.m. Four degrees. So cold, you can imagine every furnace, oil heater, and radiator making a collective roar audible from the street. At Seventh and Gratiot, glittering motes of bran hang in the air of the Ralston-Purina feed mill. The cold is irrelevant; the wheat dust is its own combustible. An explosion rips through the feed mill with a whooshing sound, creating a fireball against the gray sky. Soon, the entire Checkerboard Square complex is blazing. The fire department dispatches 22 pumper trucks, but struggles to put out a fire with water that turns to ice almost as soon as it shoots from the hose. About 6:30 p.m., the Ambassador Kingsway Hotel begins to burn; the Musical Arts Building in Gaslight Square follows 20 minutes later. As the temperature drops to zero, then to 7 degrees below, 44 other buildings catch fire, as space heaters overheat and sparks jump from fireplaces overstuffed with newspaper and coal. Soon, there are only seven pumper trucks in reserve. The fire department sends its cantina bus to Gratiot Street. Firefighters use spanners to chip open the clasps on their frozen suits, then get 15 minutes to warm up, drink some coffee, and eat a hot dog before returning to the fire. Purina burns for days. The fire at the Musical Arts Building, by contrast, is doused quickly. It is home to Three Fountains Restaurant and the Laughing Buddha coffee shop, the only place in St. Louis with an espresso machine and a regular schedule of earnest folk singers. The next morning, the building is sooty and sealed shut, and the street is so thick with ice, streetcars can’t navigate the tracks on this stretch of Olive Street. There, at the center of the block, framed by glittering icicles as sharp and long as a monster’s teeth, is a jolly golden Buddha, rubbing his belly like a magic lamp, reminding us nothing’s permanent,
and winter always melts into spring.
