The Redwood gazette. [volume] (Redwood Falls, Minn.) 1873-1940, 1875-03-11
The Recent Church Calamity In New
York City.

The Recent Church Calamity IN New
York City.
New York papers of the 26th ult. give
the following detailed account OF the
recent church accident caused by fall
ing wall IN that city:
A little more than six weeks ago the
immense five-story crockery warehouse
fronting on Duane and Chatham streets,
and lnclosing Sweeney's Hotel upon the
corner, was destroyed by fire. The west
wall was left standing at nearly its
full height, overhanging on its west side |
st. Andrews Roman Catholic Church, a
narrow alleyway running between them,
The church stretches back from Duane
street about two-thirds as far as the wall |
did, and beyond the church tenement.
house fronting on City Hall place is next
neighbor to the ruin. The night after
the fire in the warehouse the wall was
found out of plumb, and the tenement
house was emptled. Since then work at
rebuilding the warehouse on the old wall
has been begun.
The wall fell last night over upon St.
Andrews Church, where services were
going on, and breaking through the east
side of the roof, from the middle toward
the northern end, crushed it down upon
the east gallery, where from 100 to $50
people were sitting, killing seven people
and inJuring many more severely. The
Lenten services had crowded the church
more than usual, although the weather
was very rough and wet, and probably
thousand worshipers were present.
Eofh no, - A. -,
was acting as celebrant, and with his
boys occupied his place near the pulpit,
on the east side. Father Carroll, of St.
Stephens, preached the evening sermon,
taking "NOw is the accepted time" for
his text.
He had not been speaking long when
the crash came. In the high wind that
prevailed during the first quarter of an
hour after eight o'clock the wall, weak
ened by the frosts and thaws of the last
| month, had given way. The noise was &C
companied by sitting and binding dust
| from the shattered plaster of the ceiling,
and for time it was impossible for
those who had escaped the ruin to see
what or how great the disaster The
house was filled at once with the cries of
the hurt in the gallery and the shrieking
OF the terribly frightened crowd below
Father Carroll sprang from the pulpit
and was lost in the crowd upon the floor,
which made one united rush for the
three doorways opening on Duane street.
AS is usual in a church congregation the
women far Outnumbered the men, and,
though the doors will, when fastened
open, empty the church in five minutes,
the crush was so strong it lasted fifteen or
twenty minutes, and was as great a
calamity as the fall of the wall itself.
The crowd from the floor, reinforced
by two streams from the galleries, fought
for the doors. The three doors open in
ward. Two of them-the main door
and the east door-luckily were fastened
wide open before the crowd reached
them. The third door, which was beset
the more strongly because the disaster
on the east side of the church had sent
many frightened people hurrying over
to the west side, had one of Its tw,. leaves
shut and left only very narrow exit.
The police outside, gathered in some
force by this time, endeavored to force
open the other leaf of the door, but the
thrust of the crowd against it was so
great that the attempt, two or three
times repeated, succeeded only when
the other doors had relieved the church
of the extreme pressure. In the terrible
crush within women and men tainted
and fell an9 were trampled upon. The
breath was fairly ground out of others,
and they were lifted along insensibly in
the press.
Blinded and choked with dust, and
screaming with fright and pain, the 900
odd people who we're able to move found
themselves in the street, mingling with a
crowd of horror-struck spectators as
frightened as nybody, families sepa-
rated, children lost, no one certain except
of individual safety, and no one knowing
how great or how little the disaster might
be. They were torn, bruised and
bleeding crowd whom the police had to
clear from the flags with the other crowd
that filled the street from sidewalk to
sidewalk and was pressing up to see
what had happened. Without, the church
showed no signs of the disaster. The
front wall was uninjured. When the
crowd was nearly out company of fire.
men and policemen forced their way in
They found the aisles Uttered with
sleeves, cloaks, coats, hats and rags torn
OF in the struggle, and found also few
men around the insensible bodies of a
woman and boy who had tainted in the
press, and others assisting those who
had been too much injured to walk The
roof overhead broken through, and the
almost entire absence of debris upon the
floor, sent them to the east gallery at
once. There they found few heavy
timbers from the roof lying among the
remnants of the pews, and the whole
northern two-thirds of the gallery strewn
with broken and splintered boards
bricks, slate and mortar, all wet by the
drenching rain. One woman lay under a
beam with her leg broken, and under an
other timber a man was crushed fatally,
but still breathing. The church wall had
not given way, though it was driven out
of plumb and bulged inward, and only a
portion of the roof, close to the wall, the
break beginning in the middle of the
roof and spreading both ways, further to
the north than to the south.
From the first point reached by the
falling debris along the gallery and
down to the doors an irregular line Of
bodies was found. In some few the life
was extinct; others were so badly hurt
as to be unable to move, while not few
were found in state of syncope, the re-
suit of fright. The debris was light
enough to admit of the easy extrication
of the twenty or more who lay unable to
| mOVe. Inc large 1OrCe Oh ponce ana
firemen made short work of carrying out
the dead and injured.
None of the dead were badly disfg-
ured or rendered at all difficult of identi-
fication. The list included: Rosanna
McGlinn, aged fifty years; Michael Nc
carthy aged twenty; Mary A cennoTs
aged fifty; boy named Feany, aged five
or six. None of them spoke or exhibited
any signs of life when found. The whole
number of injured was over fifty-only a
few being seriously hurt.