The Fire that Was Forgotten Too Soon:

Impacts of Toronto's Esplanade Fire of 1885

Thomas Rogers

Toronto - 2023

In the early hours of August 3, 1885, the Port of Toronto burned. The fire began just after midnight in a glucose factory on the shoreline. The stormy conditions on Lake Ontario that night caused the fire to spread quickly from the glucose factory, becoming a conflagration that encompassed much of the industrial railway district known as the Esplanade. In the aftermath, the nightwatchman was the only known human casualty of the fire, but the property that was destroyed would prove extensive.¹ The affected property included industrial facilities, watercraft and their cargos, commodities, and port infrastructure. This paper will examine the history of the Esplanade and Toronto's adaptive and preventative measures leading up to the 1885 fire. By uncovering the impacts experienced by property and business owners---and the changes that resulted, this essay will document the ways in which Toronto's Esplanade Fire of 1885 inadequately influenced the city's fire safety policy in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries.

The Esplanade Before the Fire

In 1818, the Esplanade was the dream of Toronto city designers, who set aside thirty acres for the creation of a mall, complete with a fair green.² It was not actually built until 1855, however, at a cost of $150,000, the interest on which was paid by the water lot owners in the area, who owned stock in the Grand Trunk and Northern Railways.³

Figures 1 and 2 represent a proposed design from 1853, and a painting of how the Esplanade looked in 1854, respectively. In the former, civil engineer Kivas Tully's plans involved the maintenance of a pedestrian, equestrian, and carriage-friendly Esplanade, with bridges crossing the railway tracks.⁴ This plan never came to fruition, to the chagrin of many of Toronto's citizens⁵ but to the boon of many of its capitalists.⁶ It would undergo reclamation to allow for rail lines shortly after this image was created.

Instead, the railway stakeholders would win out over beautification efforts, as a by-product of "squabbling and procrastination" and "short-run, selfish commercial interests, abetted by a City Council that gave only lip-service to the concept a of a parklike lakefront."⁷ This decision was not without controversy at the time.⁸

Figure 3, from a plan of Esplanade Street, provides geographical context: the fire was bounded by Scott Street in the west and Princess Street in the east.⁹

Figure 4 is an artist's version of what the Esplanade looked like eight years after the fire, in 1893.¹⁰ A close look reveals a port busy with sail ships and steamers in the water, and railways on the land. It is unsurprising, then, that the Esplanade was soon forgotten by the average Torontonian, following the fire.¹¹ To most, it had been seen, quite correctly, as an unsightly industrial network of railway lines which made much of the waterfront difficult to access.

Fire Prevention and Insurance

Means of fire prevention and risk mitigation were too rudimentary to be effective within urban centers in the 1880's, especially in North America.¹² Consequently, fire insurance was the primary adaptation to fire hazard at the time. Insurance was an adaptation that necessarily preceded the development of effective means of fire containment, rigid building codes, fireproof living conditions, and systems of inspection. Toronto property owners fared better than those in smaller urban centers in the 1880's: close to three quarters of Toronto fires resulted in the insured recouping at least 50 percent of the value of the damaged property.¹³ When fireproof construction was utilized in the nineteenth century, its primary purpose was protecting the safety of property rather than the people inside it, whose safety at the time was treated as an afterthought.¹⁴ The relative effectiveness of insurance coverage was a saving grace to the property owners in the "nineteenth century urban tinder box" that was Toronto, which like many cities of that century "was cheaply built because it was likely to be burned down."¹⁵

Toronto did make amendments to building code bylaws in 1850, likely in response to the city's Great Fire of 1849, which occurred during a period when "scarcely a Saturday or Sunday night passed without a fire taking place."¹⁶ Bylaw 152 created a special zone within the city which delineated where certain regulations applied, and classified buildings by size and use. This classification was short-lived: less than a year after the classification system was established it was simplified to ensure all buildings be constructed of non-combustible materials. In a bureaucratic oversight, however, the requirement only applied to buildings on streets serviced by sewers.¹⁷ Issues like this meant that the verbiage of building and zoning bylaws was in constant flux between the 1849 fire and the Esplanade Fire in 1885.

In 1869, bylaw 503 became the first to include a zoning map, as seen in figure 5.¹⁸ The Esplanade has been highlighted in red in the image, with the yellow lines indicating the east-west extent of the "fire-swept wreck" left in 1885.¹⁹ Tellingly, the fire limits of 1869 exclude the buildings that would burn in 1885. 1869 would also mark the beginning of a process of growth that would see inter-provincial fire insurance companies triple their business over the next 18 years.²⁰

Toronto established a permanent, paid fire brigade in 1874, three years after the Great Chicago Fire. Whether Toronto can be given credit for having learned from Chicago's hard-earned lessons when organizing its own firefighting capabilities is debatable. To put things in perspective -- granted that Chicago was a more populous city -- Chicago's Fire Department at the time of their 1871 fire was a "shamefully inadequate" 216 firemen; conversely, Toronto's in 1885 "boasted" of 75 men.²¹ Firefighting expenditures for the Toronto Fire Department, some of whom are pictured in figure 6, amounted to $102,663.12 in 1885.²² Though inflation conversions for years preceding 1914 are limited by Bank of Canada resources, this amount can be extrapolated to approximately $3,200,000 in 2023.²³

The Night of the Fire

The fire began at approximately 12:25a.m. in the glucose factory at the foot of Berkeley Street when a patrolling nightwatchman dropped his oil lamp.²⁴ It spread rapidly, fueled by the combination of high easterly winds and highly flammable building materials. Figure 7 illustrates the specific area affected by the fire, indicating the location of the glucose factory where the fire began (circled in red); and the direction that the fire travelled (indicated by the orange arrow), as far as Scott Street.²⁵

The total value of all property losses was estimated at $500,000, of which $300,000 was covered by insurance.²⁶ One of those who was commercially affected was a businessman and sailor named George Gooderham. Gooderham had previously experienced the devastating effects of fire on one of his Esplanade properties when the Gooderham and Worts mill and distillery had burned in 1869, incidentally the same year that bylaw 503 failed to include it---or any of the Esplanade---in fire limit zoning.²⁷ In the 1885 fire, that same rebuilt mill and distillery survived. One of Gooderham's other property interests was the glucose factory, however, which was completely destroyed. The factory was insured for $49,000: a fraction of its $175,000-200,000 value.²⁸

Gooderham also suffered property loss as an indirect consequence of the fire: his beloved 70-foot shoal-draught centreboard schooner, Oriole, seen in figure 8, was pushed so hard to sail across the stormy lake in response to the fire that she became damaged and was subsequently destroyed.²⁹ While the Oriole represents an indirect casualty of the Esplanade Fire, other vessels burned within it.

The ships and boats destroyed or severely damaged, with their values listed, included the Annie Craig, a ferry that had been at the Church Street slip ($7,000); the Annie Mulvey, along with its cargo of 500 tons of coal ($4,000, not insured); the Flight (value unknown); the Madeline (value unknown); the Maple Leaf ($6,850) including her cargo of stone, which was worth $3,000---she would be rebuilt a year later; the ferry Mazeppa ($9,000) which would also be rebuilt a year later; the Minden ($500); the four-year old, 104-foot steamer Ontario ($12,000); the Sprite ($350); the steamer Theresa ($6,000); the Veronica ($2,000); and the screw tug Zebra (unknown value).³⁰ Many of these vessels had been moored at the ends of Church and George streets.

In addition to ships and their cargo, damage was sustained by port infrastructure, like the Church Street passenger wharf, about 500 feet of which was destroyed.³¹ The owner of the wharf, Alex Nairn, began rebuilding it within 25 days, despite his loss being only "very slightly covered by insurance."³² Along with Nairn's wharf on Church Street were destroyed large coal sheds, stables, and offices.³³ Like Nairn, many of the affected businesses recovered and sought to rebuild as soon as was practical.³⁴ Two of the commodities that would have been moving through Toronto's port in great volume were coal and grains on their way to and from factories and distilleries like Gooderham and Wort's.³⁵ Coal, as exemplified by the ample payload lost with the Annie Mulvey, was a particularly important commodity at the port: indeed 354,498 tons of it were imported alone, in 1885.³⁶ The Esplanade Fire arguably did not hold back the economic performance of the Port of Toronto in 1885: the city's imports that year were nearly equal to those of Buffalo, Cincinnati, Chicago, Detroit, Milwaukee, and St. Louis combined.³⁷

During the Esplanade Fire, Toronto's available firemen responded and performed their duties admirably, as did the onlookers, many of whom stepped in to assist them as was required by law.³⁸ The fire crews sustained smoke inhalation injuries, temporary blindness, and exhaustion; but many were able to return to the fire after resting. The fire's only human victim, the nightwatchman, was never identified; though author C.H.J. Snider writes that his identity was narrowed down to two names: Rooney, or Henry Wort.³⁹ The legacy of the fire was not simply destruction, loss, and reactionary rebuilding. The lessons learned from the fire were catalysts for policy change, in the form of amendment to building code.

The Aftermath

Three days after the fire, on August 6^th, the Toronto Works Committee was presented a proposal for an amendment to bylaw 627, providing for a new zone that would encompass the Esplanade, to be referred to as Fire Limit D.⁴⁰ Within this limit, stricter building codes would apply to any wooden buildings erected in the area. Five days later, the City Council officially amended bylaw 627.

The amended bylaw stipulated that within fire limit D,

No buildings or erections of any description shall be constructed of wood unless the outer walls and roof of the same shall be covered with a rough coating of mortar, of at least half an inch in thickness, then to be sheeted with galvanized or corrugated iron ... in such a manner so as to leave an air space between the iron and the wood, the whole to be approved of by the City Commissioner or other officer appointed by this Council for the purpose of inspecting buildings.⁴¹

In addition to these changes, Mr. Chapman, a representative of the property-owners who wanted better fire protection on the Esplanade, requested that the city procure a marine fire engine.⁴² There is no evidence within the History of the Toronto Fire Department or in The Globe that this request was ever met. Whether the bylaw changes were effective at reducing fire risk is debatable, given the events that followed.

The 1885 fire would not be the last time that fire would result in the loss of property on the Esplanade. Indeed, in October of the very same year a foundry "as dry as tinderwood" burned to the ground.⁴³ The building was uninsured because it was deemed "so liable to catch fire" that insurance companies declined to take the risk.⁴⁴ In 1892, the Toronto Canoe Company's building, valued at $20,000 with $15,000 of insurance coverage burned, precipitating a number of boat owners to scramble to their moorings in order to move their vessels to safety; perhaps with memories of 1885 in mind.⁴⁵ In the 1904 Great Fire of Toronto, the Esplanade was minorly affected when the railway signalmen's and the Grand Trunk Railway's sheds were burned.⁴⁶ Six months following the Great Fire, another fire caused $10,000 in damage, half of which was covered by insurance.⁴⁷ Esplanade fires occurring in 1905 and 1922 resulted in a combined loss of $90,000 and nineteen horses.⁴⁸ These incidents highlight the failure of the building code amendments to address fire hazards among existing buildings, rather than just new builds. While the fire resulted in destruction and loss for many, it represented opportunity for others.

One example of a Toronto business taking advantage of the 1885 Esplanade Fire through opportunistic marketing is demonstrated by the advertisement in figure 9 for "one of Toronto's representative institutions," J. & J. Taylor.⁴⁹ The safe company's advertisement features a letter from the secretary of the glucose factory, where he extolls the fire-proof qualities of their safe, which would have been incidentally manufactured just across the Esplanade.⁵⁰

The people of Toronto moved on quickly from the Esplanade Fire. Compared to the two great fires which Toronto is known for, the Esplanade Fire of 1885 has been largely forgotten. Figure 10 shows the Esplanade nine years after the fire, with no conspicuous evidence that it happened.⁵¹

While the Esplanade Fire changed the fortunes of the nightwatchman and the property owners who lost in the conflagration, the incident was a relatively insignificant event for the City of Toronto, generally. Indeed, the table of contents in Armstrong's book A City in the Making: Progress, People & Perils in Victorian Toronto features a section on "Disasters and Recoveries," under which are listed the chapters on "The First Great Fire, 1849," "The Rebuilding After the First Great Fire," and "The Second Great Fire, 1904."⁵² More surprisingly, nor is the fire mentioned in the History of the Toronto Fire Department, which devotes multiple pages to the 1904 fire---an incident which inspired the department to increase the force to 208 men, procure two new steamers, and an additional hook and ladder truck, within a year.⁵³ As discussed above, the policy change regarding building code was likely less strict than it should have been, given the subsequent fires on the Esplanade. Fire insurance remained the primary adaptation to the hazard presented by building fires throughout nineteenth century North America.⁵⁴

Though it is not a widely known historical event among contemporary Torontonians, the Esplanade Fire of 1885 was a significant incident for the affected workers and business owners like Gooderham and Nairn; the sailors, owners, and workers reliant on the watercraft listed above; and the firemen who were involved. It was an event of temporary importance to the city's civil servants and the underwriting insurance companies. Most tragically, it was the final event of an unknown nightwatchman's life. Apart from those identified here, the fire was a relatively minor incident in comparison with the city's Great Fire of 1904, considering it was omitted from the record of the fire department's history. The limited efficacy of the policy changes that resulted from the event suggest that a more comprehensive analysis of the fire might have mitigated the disastrous outcomes of the Great Fire of 1904, as well as some of the subsequent fires that occurred on the Esplanade. The Esplanade Fire of 1885 represents a lesson in the hazards of rebuilding from and collectively forgetting fire incidents too soon after the smoke has cleared. This lesson would go unlearned until the 20^th^ century.