I wonder what woke my grandfather up at 2 a.m. on January 16, 1967. The sirens, perhaps? The smell of smoke? The hum of fire engines?
I suppose it’s possible he slept through to the morning and got the news later.
But I suspect he couldn’t help but wake up as part of the church across the street from his home burned.
January 16, 1967.
As I’ve previously lamented, the Stamford Advocate has no publicly accessible online archives, so I don’t know what caused the fire at the Springdale Methodist Church, now known as the United Methodist Church of Springdale.
(An Associated Press article that ran the day after the fire didn’t give a cause, but said it started in the cellar. The article estimated the damage at $40,000, which is about $282,800 in 2014 dollars, if online inflation calculators are to be trusted.)
The church’s website says the fire destroyed the original section of the church, dating to 1876 — an area including the original sanctuary, the fellowship hall, kitchen, choir room and secretary’s office.
A substantial portion of the church was saved, including the more recently built sanctuary and social hall. The morning after the blaze, a city fire official suggested the more recent wing of the church might be available for the following Sunday’s services, and perhaps it was. (January 16 was a Monday, so they would have had a whole week to get work done.)
My grandpa does not seem to have taken pictures of the blaze as it happened.
Maybe he wasn’t comfortable with his ability to take pictures in such unusual lighting conditions. Maybe he wanted to stay out of the way. Maybe he did take pictures, but threw them out because they didn’t come out to his satisfaction.
(Or, again, maybe he slept through the whole thing.)
He was there to capture the razing and clearing of the fire-damaged parts of the church. The weather looks to have been temperate; you can see the gents from the wrecking company in what appear to be windbreakers. Perhaps those conditions made the fire easier to fight and contain.
Just for comparison’s sake, here are a couple of shots of the church in the years before the fire:
Christmas 1958 or 1959. The portion of the church to the left of the front door was destroyed in the fire.
1960. I believe the people pictured were leaving on some sort of retreat.
A church bazaar in 1959 …
… and another in 1960. Nice hat on that kid in the foreground.
The church added a new wing the year after the fire, and is still using it.
I think the new section of the church is visible behind my brother and I in the next picture, which was taken in 1975.
My memory, which is not what it used to be, says my grandparents took us across the street to play on a small playground next to the church. Of course the camera went with us.
The architect hired to do the job clearly did not make it a priority to match the look of the existing building. But, however drab or stark it might be, concrete has one wonderful attribute: It doesn’t burn.
Hope Street 
I’m proud of you for not using “Holy Smoke” as a title, or even anywhere in the blog. Do people still say that, or am I dating myself?
And I’m sure you recognized your grandfather’s unmistakeable sign work on “RING POP” and “XXXXXXX’s Christmas Table”.
I don’t know why your grandfather didn’t take pictures during the blaze. I do know that he and your grandmother made coffee for the firemen to have while fighting the fire (the fire was a several-hour ordeal), and brought it over to them.
Never even occurred to me. I considered a couple of progressive-rock and heavy-metal references but those went by the wayside as well.
I momentarily wondered why your grandfather hadn’t used “Holy Smoke” on his calendar entry; for sure it occurred to him. I remembering him using it when describing the fire many months after the fact, when it was clear that no one got hurt and the church was somehow still solvent. As he and his family were loyal members of that church, and their daughter had been christened in the part that burned down (when it was the sanctuary), many memories must have gone through his mind as the church was burning, and so the fire was no joking matter on Jan. 16, 1967.
It was very shocking to everyone in Springdale when the church burned. Even more shocking was the new building. Springdale still had a small New England town look to it in ’67. The church and older part of Springdale school across the street were almost a centerpiece. Shortly after the new addition the shopping center expanded big time, the houses across from your grandparents were torn down and more stores built and of course the inevitable bank with drive-in. Then the condos started. Some call it progress but it was sad to see.
Currently they are trying to give it a “village feel” with old fashioned street lamps and brick sidewalks but…..
Thanks for sharing so many pictures. Most of ours are just in our yard. Hope street was the “main drag” and its nice to see it when kids could still cross easily and cars could still park easily by the curb.
Good job
Thanks as always for the memories.
I have a number of other pix my grandpa took in the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s. Maybe some week I will do a photo gallery and bring some more of them out of the archives.
Dear Maryanne:
You clearly lived in Springdale when I did, and apparently still do. Do we know each other? You’re not perchance Maryanne Stewart, are you?
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