Mount Holyoke's Seminary Building Destroyed by Fire One Hundred Years Ago This Week

On September 27, 1896--a century ago this week--fall classes were just getting underway in Mount Holyoke's Seminary Building when a fire reduced the sixty-year-old structure to ashes. The early years of Mount Holyoke's first building, and the conflagration that destroyed it, are commemorated in a College archives exhibition on display through October 7 in the lower level of Dwight Hall.

According to research by archives librarian Patricia Albright, the Seminary Building "was always imperiled by fire. Student letters contain numerous reports of near disasters from lightning strikes, fireplace mishaps, and accidents with lamps and matches." The fire that completely destroyed the four-story brick structure, which housed both students' living quarters and classrooms, probably started in a laundry room near the gymnasium.

>>> Then as now, media loved a dramatic story; the Springfield Union carried this front-page article about the fire.

According to Albright, "Firefighters from South Hadley, Holyoke, and Northampton were summoned but could not contain the flames, which quickly spread through the wings to the main building." Within five hours, everything was in ruins. Before the walls fell, students and townspeople alike rescued furniture and personal possessions from the burning structure, and more than 5,000 spectators came to gawk at the fire. Amazingly, no one was injured in the blaze.

Nevertheless, U.S. President William McKinley telegraphed his niece Grace, a sophomore at MHC, telling her to go to Smith. She wired back, "Not much; am going to stay here." Her uncle, presumably impressed by Grace's dedication to Mount Holyoke, was the commencement speaker when she graduated in 1899.

While the ashes were still smoldering, 300 MHC teachers and students, suddenly homeless, were taken in by relatives, friends, and neighbors in South Hadley and nearby towns. Classes resumed on September 29, only two days after the fire.

President Elizabeth Mead rallied the College community at a church service in October, saying "Mount Holyoke, now as in the past, knows but two words, 'Go forward.' " And forward the College went, raising money for an ambitious rebuilding campaign that led to the erection in the next few years of Mary Lyon Hall, and student residences in Brigham, Pearsons, Porter, Safford, and the original Rockefeller Halls.