Lunchtime Lectures - "Boston on Fire: A History of Fires and Firefighting in Boston"
Date and Time
Wednesday Sep 22, 2021
1:00 PM - 2:00 PM EDT
Wednesday, September 22nd, 1 PM
Location
Online - Register here: Webinar Registration - Zoom
Fees/Admission
This program is supported by a grant from the Bridge Street Fund, a special initiative of MassHumanities and the Massachusetts Cultural Council.
Through their generosity, this presentation is free to the public.
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Contact Information
Nora Bigelow, Assistant Curator, Peabody Historical Society & Museum
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Description
The Peabody Historical Society and Museum are hosting a series of Lunchtime Lectures on Zoom.
The last program in our series, journalist Stephanie Schorow presents “Boston on Fire: A History of Fires and Firefighting in Boston.”
Join us by registering here : Webinar Registration - Zoom.
Fires have shaped Boston since its founding on a narrow peninsula in 1630. In the first comprehensive history of Boston’s major fires, Stephanie Schorow tells the dramatic tales of seventeenth-century fires (which were viewed as signs of God’s wrath), the 1834 Ursuline convent fire, the Great Fire of 1872, the Chelsea conflagrations of 1908 and 1973, the tragic Cocoanut Grove nightclub fire, the Vendome Hotel collapse that killed nine firefighters in 1972, and an arson ring that terrorized the city in the 1980s. In her book of the same name, there are also chapters devoted to two key Boston innovations: the Hunneman fire engine and the citywide fire alarm system (first in the nation) developed by William Francis Channing and Moses Farmer.
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