The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1872-11-30 00:00:00

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Wlidefllaila of rubbish, the fire began which Gnaw here, and
swallowed in Its course all that bad been so painfully put
together through so many years, and secured by eery pre-
cantles Oat reasS device Ms found outagebost precisely the
danger which befell It. So many men have-been so many years
In building% and the fire in spite of all that human orgael•
Batton has done against fire, has unbuilt It In six hours.
This unfinished Post-office marks it. limit. Hitherto it has
come and no farther, and here at last its proud waves were
beaten back by human effort. The caduceus of the messenger
god on the facade, with its writhed and scorched serpents,
was held up between the living and the dead that the plague
might be stayed. Anal here, however it may have been else-
where, the victory is clearly of human skill, and courage.
The Post-office is roofed and otherwise nearer done than the
larger and more fortunately placed taut not more command-
ing Poet office in City-hall.pak. Like that, it is of gra-
nite. The columns at two corners have been burnt out
of shape, and one or two of them almost out of existence,
by the fervent hoot so near it. But here it stands, and
now, as on Saturday, with all its openinm uncovered and
with a network of light wooden amffolding. which these
openings expose to fire. over the whole interior of it. The
firemen kept it so drenched that the dunes which burnt
away the granite at the corners did not even char the wood
work within. But in this very praise there Iles a reproach.
If this building which thus invited destruction by fire not
oily stands unconsumed but was the bulwark which held
hack the it from eating up the whole of Boston, why Is it
that a stand walnut made on one of the many burnt buildings
which were not only by structure, but by equipment anal pre-
paration, intended to be fire-proof / From here for a stretch
of almost half smile southward were solid squares or polygons
of granite, with here and there a building of marble or of
brick. Of these granite buildings it may be said with almost
literal exactness that there is not left one stone upon another
that Is not torn down. And not only no, but the massive
stones thus disjointed are disintegrated. 1 picked up and
pocketed a plem of marble and of granite of equal size which
lay alongside each other They had been subjected to the same
tremendous test. The granite crumbled under toy ringers like
caked rice. The marble was. firm aa when it was quarried.
All over this track you may see what must amount to
minims of bushels of grains of granite the size of
blasting powder, reduced to that state, not by concussion,
mark you, lor gruite splits, and does not disintegrate when
it is struck, however hard, by mere heat. It looks as if there
had been a hailstorm of adamant. Meantime, in this wreck
of granite, the marble building at what was as near as I
could make out, the corner of Lindell and Congress streets
stands erect, and in structure uninjured. The facade
has not a fissure in it. These warehouses were all superbly
built of vast blocks. There is scarcely anything left
by which we may Judge how goodly they were. Most
of these great stones have gone to powder, as I said but
some of them remain to snow cyclopean building. They are
all seamed. Pick one of thus seams with your fingers, and
off come whole laminre four or five feet long. A boy can kick
on of them into pieces. And here are brick piers etanding
unsupported to the height of fifteen or twenty feet in this
welt., of granite. The spacious granite fronts have dis-
solved and disappeared. The brick putitiou walls and piern
stand often uninjured, always uninjured when good mortar
has been used to join them. From a brick vault I saw a
mall precariously perched upon a ladder, extracting his
books in perfect ceder, while of the granite which had hidden
the brick barely enough was left upon the ground to show
what it had been. In one place a brick wall four stories
high, and in extent the whole aide of • warehouse, stands
alone and perfect. Of course the next high wind will blow it
down, but while it stands it is an eloquent witness to the
excellence of the material of which it is made. In one or
two places into be seen what was so common a sight in
Chicago, • heap of bricks actually on fire and blazing. But
all these bricks are the yellow western bricks, coloured by the
sulphur compounded with their clay. Everything seems to
have stood better thar. granite. There are the skeletons of two
granite buildings left, and of onir two. These are Trinity
Church and a small building on the corner of Sommer and
High streets. But both of these are on the edge of the ruins,
and neither of them felt the full forge of the tire. It
swept by them whirling their wood work with it. But of
all those granite buildings which were the boast of
Boston, and which were really tried in the great furnace
where they were thickest, not one remains in decipher-
able outline. St. Stephen's Church, near the river,
Is built of the brown stone so common in New York. Three
walls of it and even the bell-gable at the front are left, so
frayed and scorched as to make it the most picturesque ruin
in Boston, but sound, and that can be built from. Around it
lathe chaos of granite graveL The only front left standing
in Waehington.street is marble. There are one or two
fissur ea in it, but every stone of it le there.