Winters of Yesteryear

This photo of a post-blizzard scene of a fire includes huge amounts of ice enveloping the destroyed buildings. The Hoboken Fire Department ladder truck is seen encrusted with ice on the raised ladder. The alarm came in at 8:25 PM, so the fire was fought overnight. It had to have been one of the worst environments for combatting a fire in residential buildings.

It reminds us that such conflagrations are not common today even if we seem to have a winter as bad as this one.

The image is in the Museum Collection from a negative film copy courtesy of the Hoboken Public Library. They hold the original photograph and it is also available through the Rutgers Digital Highway where they have placed on-line versions of several hundred of their historical images.

The copy is seen with some more info online in our collections database, keyword: 2001.137.0008

Museum Collections