Sadly, Ridgeway has a history of building fires that has devastated parts of the city. I mentioned a few weeks ago that all the city records were lost in the fire that destroyed the Whistler & Eaton grocery on June 18, 1911. That same year, the home of H. C. Polley burned to the ground on December 15, 1911. Ridgeway’s bucket brigade came out and was able to save most of the furnishings while school children watched during their lunch time. (Ridgeway Journal, Dec. 21, 1911).
Just a couple months later, the bucket brigade was called out again when Wayne Goodwin, an employee at the Central Hotel, heard a loud explosion and ran out to see flames coming out the windows of the Ridgeway opera house, owned by J. W. Leazenby. The building was located on the east side of Main Street (Ridgeway Journal, Mar 7, 1912). The brigade tried their hardest, but the opera house and most of its contents were lost as well as the law office of R. Hopkins, L. Manuel’s general merchandise store and the “Racket” store belonging to J. C. Smith which all occupied space on the first floor. In addition, three adjacent frame buildings were heavily damaged. These included a shoe store, millinery shop and restaurant. The heat was so intense that it blew out windows in businesses on the west side of Main Street. The damaged buildings were woefully under-insured. The fire caused about $30,000 of damage (over $800,000 today) and the owners combined only had about $12,000 of insurance.
The writer of the article noted there had been no fires in the opera house that day or evening and the lawyer had let his fire go out. He asked how the fire started and how it spread to the upper floors so quickly. Despite searching the Journal pages for the next several months, I did not find a follow-up story with any explanations.
Dorothy Polley included some information about the Ridgeway opera house in the history of Ridgeway that she wrote for the “1976 Harrison County Bicentennial History”. The opera house was built in 1900 by Frank Kern and George Pierce from brick made in their brick kiln. The building was three full stories and was used by the community for many events including plays, lectures, medicine shows and graduations.
The Central Hotel burned in December of 1912 and would later be replaced by the New Ridgeway Hotel which was dedicated in 1917. Reading about all these fires makes me very grateful that Ridgeway now has such a great volunteer fire department!
