The Great Fire of 1901 - St. John's Cathedral - Jacksonville, FL - Famous Fires on Waymarking.com

The Great Fire of 1901 was one of the worst disasters in Florida history and the largest urban fire in the Southeast. It was similar in scale and destruction to the 1871 Great Chicago Fire.

Origin

Around noon of Friday, May 3, 1901, a spark from a kitchen fire during the lunch hour at a mattress factory set mattresses filled with Spanish moss on fire at the factory, located in an area now known as LaVilla. The fire was soon discovered and it was thought they could put it out with only a few buckets of water. Consequently an alarm was not turned on until it had gone beyond their control.

Aftermath

The fire swept through 146 city blocks, destroyed over 2,368 buildings, and left almost 10,000 people homeless all in the course of eight hours. It is said the glow from the flames could be seen in Savannah, Georgia; smoke plumes in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Florida Governor William S. Jennings declared a state of martial law in Jacksonville and dispatched several state militia units to help. Reconstruction started immediately, and the city was returned to civil authority on May 17. Despite the widespread damage, only seven deaths were reported.

St. John's Cathedral History & Reconstruction

In the early 1870s, Edward T. Potter designed a new St. John's Episcopal Church in Jacksonville, Florida. It appears that initial construction of this church occurred in 1873 and was completed and dedicated in 1877. It later burned in Jacksonville's Great Fire of 1901. In 1902, the Vestry of St. John's approved the design drawings for a new church building submitted by the firm Snelling and Potter and construction was started. The cornerstone for the present Gothic Revival church, St. John's Cathedral, was laid in 1903 and it includes information indicating that the building was burned in 1901. The cathedral was completed in 1906.