On November 8, 1962, the famous Ford Rotunda stood in
Dearborn, Michigan for the last time: the next day, it is
destroyed in a massive fire. Some 1.5 million people
visited the Rotunda each year, making it the fifth most
popular tourist attraction in the U.S. (behind Niagara Falls,
Smokey Mountain National Park, the Smithsonian, and the
Lincoln Memorial).

Ford had commissioned the Rotunda for the 1933 Century
of Progress exposition in Chicago and had moved it to
Dearborn when the fair ended.

Christmas exhibit at Ford Rotunda, December 1955.

On October 8, 1871, flames sparked in the Chicago barn of
Patrick and Catherine O’Leary, igniting a two-day blaze that
killed between 200 and 300 people, destroys 17,450 buildings,
left 100,000 homeless and caused an estimated $200 million
(in 1871 dollars; more than $4 billion today) in damages.

Legend has it that a cow kicked over a lantern in the O’Leary
barn and started the fire, but other theories hold that humans
or even a comet may have been responsible for the event that
left four square miles of the Windy City, including its business
district, in ruins.

On August 24, 1814, during the War of 1812 between the United
States and England, British troops entered Washington, D.C.
and burned the White House in retaliation for the American
attack on the city of York in Ontario, Canada, in June 1813.

When the British arrived at the White House, they found that
President James Madison and his first lady Dolley (below) 
had already fled to safety in Maryland.

Soldiers reportedly sat down to eat a meal made of leftover
food from the White House scullery using White House
dishes and silver before ransacking the presidential 
mansion and setting it ablaze.


 

More than 1,000 people taking a pleasure trip on New York City’s
East River were drowned or burned to death when a fire swept
through the boat. This was one of the United States’ worst
maritime disasters.

The riverboat-style steamer General Slocum was built in 1890
and used mostly as a vehicle for taking large groups on day
outings. On June 15, the St. Mark’s German Lutheran Church
assembled a group of 1,360 people, mostly children and teachers,
for their annual Sunday School picnic.

The picnic was to take place at Locust Point in the Bronx after
a cruise up the East River on the General Slocum.

At about 9 a.m., the dangerously overcrowded boat left its dock
in Manhattan with Captain William Van Schaik in charge. As the
boat passed 83rd Street, accounts indicate that a child spotted
a fire in a storeroom.

On June 6, 1889, a fire ignited in a Seattle woodworking shop and
swept through some 100 acres, destroying much of the city’s
business district and waterfront.

The Great Seattle Fire culminates in losses estimated at $20 million
—and served as a turning point in the city’s history.

The fire started shortly after 2:30 p.m. when a pot of heated glue at
Victor Clairmont’s woodworking shop in the Pontius Building on
Front Street (now First Avenue) and Madison Avenue burst into
flames.