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Community Corner

Historic Fire at Marietta Square

In 1930, Marietta firefighters battled a blaze that destroyed several stores on Marietta Square.

Sometime late at night on Oct. 30, 1930, a cold front rolled into Marietta from the northwest. By midnight, the temperature had dropped below freezing.  Heating units were turned on for the first time in months, and while no one knows for certain, one of these may have started the fire that destroyed part of Marietta Square.

Around 1:30 a.m., someone reported smoke pouring out of a second floor window of Najjar’s Department Store. Najjar’s, along with the Florence’s Department Store and Schilling’s Hardware, occupied the northeast corner of the square where the now stands.

responded. An all-volunteer group, the department had two pumper trucks: a 1929 Seagrave Pumper, which had been placed in service the year before,  and a 1921 American LaFrance Pumper, which had replaced the department’s horse-drawn 1879 Silsby Steamer eight years earlier.

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By the time the fire department arrived, the fire had spread west to Florence's Department Store and north to Dunn’s Feed and Grocery. The adjacent cotton warehouse was spared, owing to fireproof doors and an automatic sprinkler system.

The situation was perilous. Najjar’s was lost, and Florence’s was sure to follow. Burning debris, blown aloft by the near gale-force winds that accompanied the cold front, threatened to set roofs and trees afire all around Glover Park. The firefighters, underequipped and undermanned, fought to suppress these and to keep the blaze from spreading further into Schilling’s.

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Recognizing the danger, Mayor Tom Brumby called for assistance from the Atlanta Fire Department.

As the pumper trucks from Atlanta began to roll, flames were taking hold in the hardware store as well. In a daring move to prevent the spread, firefighter Mayes Ward entered the building. The blaze was clearly spreading along rooftops, but, unknown to Mayes, it was also spreading below. Mayes just had time to see smoke billowing up from between the floorboards before they collapsed beneath him, dropping him into what witnesses described as “a fiery pit.” At great risk to his own life, Jim Palmer, an African-American volunteer, jumped in after Mayes and pulled the injured firefighter out.

As the sun rose on Halloween morning, firefighters from Marietta and Atlanta, soaked to the skin and freezing, finally gained the upper hand. The full light of day brought a solemn spectacle to the crowds gathered on the square: The scorched remains of brick walls stood like jagged shards over heaps of rubble. Almost all of the buildings fronting Marietta Square on the north side were either completely destroyed or heavily damaged. Only Hodge’s drugstore survived the fire intact.

Though the rubble was cleared away during the weeks that followed, the lots remained vacant for five years until the Strand Theater was built in 1935.

The history of this and many other fires from Marietta’s history are preserved at the . The museum also houses the fully restored pumper trucks, including the 1879 Silsby Steamer, one of only five still in existence.

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