The Newtown bee., 1894-05-18
AN EYE WITNESS OF THE BROOKLYN FIRE

Edward Day Barker of Brooklyn, a
 brother of Rev Otis W. Barker, who has recently visited in town, witnessed the | great fire at the TalmagG Tabernacle in | BroOkly" on Sunday. In a personal | note to his brother he gives the follow ing exceedingly interesting pen picture
 of the great fire; May II was a memo
 rable day in Brooklyn, l attended the | Clinton Avenue Congregational church | in the morning, and alter the close of the service strolled through the streets, and in passing the doors of the Tabernacle,
 l noticed that the congregation had not | been dismissed. l went in and stood at
 the rear of the church on the ground floor during the singing of the last nymn, II love Thy church," etc. Then
 came the long meter dOxolOgy, and after the benediCtiOn the vast congregation
 broke up and slowly dispersed. As soon
 as the ground floor was pretty well
 emptied, 1 walked forward, taking seat
 about halfway up, and looked at the
 elaborate decorations. Prof Browne
 rendered the Triumphal March very eff
 fectively, using all the stops of the great
 organ. He had finished this and was just fairly started upon q much mid"i
 theme. Dr Ialmage during the while
 was hul5ing an informal reception. He
 stood aC the left of the platform near the collection of relics from the Holy Land,
 and was shaking hands with long line
 of people that extended in front of the
 platform, across the church and up the aisles. Suddenly l noticed on the left
 of the organ, just below the decorations, very bright tongue of flame leap up| and run the length of the organ pipes.
 In few minutes the entire organ was
 ablaze, and the few hundred people still
 in the pbnrph GIpttprp1 pnirLlv in all 6i-
 rectiOns. Soon dense black clouds of
 smoke were pouring out the windows,
 and later long tongues of flame. There was considerable delay before the en- zines reached the spot, and then only two or three came. More responded later on, but against the great cOuflagratiOn then raging their efforts were futile, gand their principal attention was turned to saving the property on the opposite side of Clinton avenue, which took fire several times and was considerably damaged IL was one of the greatest sights ever wit messed, and to my mind seemed more like the hugest kind of election night bon fire. The walls held the flames within and they burst up through the rafttrs in to the sky hundreds of feet above, In much less than an hour the walls had fallen and the fire in the church was practically over, since it had nothing more t0 feed upon. Then the chief fca- ture of interest was the burning of the beautiful "Ilotel Regent" adjoining Looking at it from the front, the flames first burned the large flag upon the tower, then the flag pole and the top room in the tower. 1t descended floor by floor and across until the upper three storie were all in flames. The streams from the engines did not begin to reach the fire, SO it had practically it's own way un- til iC got SD far beyond control that the whole building was completely gutted. l The front wall of granite remains almost intact, but the rear and side walls are badly damaged. The streets were filled all the afternoon and until late in the evening with crowds of people discuss ing the great event and looking at the scene of desolatiOn. It is certainly mat ter of great congratulation that he fire in the church had not started a short quarter of an hour earlier while the build ing was thronged, for fully believe that
 if it had, there would have been one of
 the greatest catastrOphes ever known in modern times. In scarcely 10 minutes
 after l saw the first flames, the entire
 building was abaze, and the dense black
 smoke a the outset would certainly have sutlncated the occupants of the upper
 galleries long before they could have
 reached the stairways. So much for my
 personal observation and experiences the newspapers tell the rest.