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The city of Mobile has seen its share of disasters. Hurricanes are often the most thought of, but the disaster with one of the highest impacts for Mobilians of the past were fires.

We’ve already discussed how fire destroyed two hotels at the current site of the Battle House, but there were plenty of other fires. Most notably during the Progressive Era was the fire that began at 3:25 on the afternoon of May 21, 1919. It happened around what is now the location of the parking lot of the recently demolished Mobile Civic Center, previously the intersection of Madison and Hamilton Streets.

My novel Severed Legacies (The Malevolent Trilogy #3) features this 1919 disaster. One of the main characters in that book is at the courthouse when the fire bells sounded. He raced, along with most of the able-bodied men in the city, to assist in controlling the fire with bucket brigades and other such physical work. Wind, a plethora of wooden structures, and low water pressure on the city’s south side aided the blaze. Forty blocks of this densely populated neighborhood were consumed: around two hundred residences plus businesses within two square miles. About a thousand people were homeless when the sun set that evening. The characters in Severed Legacies assisted with relief efforts—as did actual Mobilians—after the disaster.

The above photo from HMPS showcases the remains of what was once the stately Godard house on S. Conception Street. Today, that location—which is to the right of the eastbound I-10 exit ramp near the Mobile County Sheriff’s Office and Mobile County Jail—is as barren and depleted as it looked over a hundred years ago after the fire, but for different reasons.

During the Progressive Era, it was a lively neighborhood with plenty to see and do. Much of what was rebuilt after the fire was eventually torn down, paved over, or left to waste away. These days, what could have been a phoenix rising from the ashes of the 1919 fire are often eyesores.

If you could bring back a structure from the past lost to disaster or in the name of progress, what would it be?

This blog series is made possible through a partnership with Historic Mobile Preservation Society. The historic photo in this post is used with the permission of Historic Mobile Preservation Society for my “Fragments Observed: Life During Mobile’s Progressive Era” blog series.
For more information about HMPS and their mission, please visit:
https://www.historicmobile.org/
And for their online archives, including requests to use photographs from their collection:
https://historicmobile.catalogaccess.com/home