1924 — Feb 19, Fire, Tenement House, 397 Madison Street, New York, NY — 13
Compiled by Wayne Blanchard; last edit 3-7-2025 for upload to: http://www.usdeadlyevents.com/
–13 Blanchard estimate. Newspapers at the time which we cite note thirteen deaths with no
mention of the death of a jumper, which the NFPA does note. We speculate that this was
mistaken, and that the death toll was thus thirteen.
–14 NFPA. “Another New York Tenement Holocaust.” NFPA Quarterly, V17, N.4, 1924, 391
–14 NFPA. “Loss of Life Fires in Apartments and Tenements.” Quarterly, 34/3, Jan 1942, p238.
–13 Middletown Daily Herald, NY. “Thirteen Die When Tenement is Burned.” 2-19-1924, p. 1.
–13 New York Times. “Fail to Find Origin of Fire Fatal to 13.” 2-20-1924, p. 12.
Narrative Information
National Fire Protection Association, “Another New York Tenement Holocaust,” 17/4, 1924: “A fire which occurred at 12 :22 A. M. on February 19, 1924, in a tenement at 397 Madison Street, New York, caused the death of fourteen persons.
Construction.
“The building was of ordinary brick construction, five stories and basement. The walls were of 12 in. brick and partitions were of wood lath arid plaster with wooden doors. The floors were single boards on joists. Ceilings were of wooden lath and plaster and skylights were of thin glass. There was one open stairway running from the bottom to the top. In the rear there was a fire escape upon which thin glass windows faced.
Occupancy.
The first floor was occupied by a tailor and by an ink and mucilage company. The upper four floors were occupied as dwellings with two families on each floor in three-room apartments.
Story of the Fire.
The fire apparently originated in the rear of the basement at the foot of the cellar stairs. The fire spread rapidly through the stair shaft and mushroomed out at the fourth and fifth floors and through the windows leading to the fire escape. The alarm was given by a policeman and the fire department responded promptly. A second alarm was turned in at 12:29 A. M., seven minutes after the first alarm. The firemen made heroic attempts to rescue the occupants but the smoke was intense and a number of tenants were suffocated in their beds. Some escaped through the roof scuttle. One man jumped from a window and was killed. Two families might have been saved by jumping- from their bedroom windows to the roof of the adjoining building from four to ten feet below. The wooden stairway was badly burned above the second floor and the fourth and fifth floors were partly destroyed.
Conclusions.
The inflammable construction of stairs, stair enclosure and partitions, undoubtedly contributed largely to the spread of the fire and particularly to the loss of life. The importance of having the stairs enclosed in a shaft of fire-resistive construction with fire doors at all communications to inside of building is apparent. Wired glass in windows facing the fire escape would probably have saved some loss of life.
The lessons of this fire have long since been learned and the defective conditions which contributed to the loss of life in this case have long been prohibited by law in the erection of new buildings. The frequent loss of life in such so-called old law tenements emphasizes the dangerous conditions which exist and the urgent need of some better safeguards, particularly against loss of life by fire.” (NFPA. “Another New York Tenement Holocaust.” NFPA Quarterly, Vol. 17, No. 4, April 1924, pp. 391-392.)
NFPA. “Loss of Life Fires in Apartments and Tenements.” Quarterly, 34/3, Jan 1942, p. 238:
“Apartment, New York, N.Y., February 19, 1924. Thirteen persons were suffocated an one man who jumped into the rear yard was killed. The smoke was so severe during the fire that many occupants were suffocated as they slept and a few were caught in the hallway as they attempted to get to the roof scuttle through which some did escape. (Quarterly, April, 1924, page 391.)”
Newspaper
Feb 19: “New York, Feb. 19. – A gibbering epileptic is believed to be the firebug who set a crowded East Side tenement in flames early today, snuffing out at least 13 lives. The man was arrested as he was [unclear word] hurriedly from the building by a passing patrolman. He was unable to give coherent answers to questions.
“Flames were sweeping into lower levels of the building when discovered by Patrolman Michael Heusline [unclear]. Almost immediately afterward he saw the strange looking man emerging from the structure and placed him under arrest. The suspect gave his name as Lewis Schnenfeld, a news butcher [?] and his address in a street several blocks from where the fire occurred. He had army discharge papers and a small vial of white powder in his pockets. ‘I haven’t any matches; yes can search me if you want.’ He said when seized by the policeman. Heusline whistled for assistance and held his man until a detective arrived.
“The patrolman then dashed through flames which already were roaring through the lower hallways of the tenement and made his way to the upper floors, beating on doors to arouse the sleeping families. Additional policemen arrived and aided in saving the lives of many housed in the five story building.
“The dead were suffocated in their beds, as the flames mushroomed on the two upper floors, filling them with thick acrid smoke.
“Police started an immediate investigation. Chief Inspector Dominick Henry believed the fire undoubtedly was incendiary and that the firebug started it by throwing lighted newspapers in a lower hallway. He believed the man who started it may be the same pyromaniac who started several fires on the Lower East Side last year.
….
“Two families were almost entirely wiped out. Bernard Barrett, a laborer, his wife and two children all perished, the only surviving member being a daughter, Margaret, who is in a hospital badly burned.
“Alex Hoqui lost his entire family – a wife and three sons – and he is in a hospital suffering from severe burns.
“Benjamin Berger, his wife and a young son and daughter all perished.
“A Mrs. Bessie Schmidt, 49 [or 40] also is among the known dead.” (Middletown Daily Herald, NY. “Thirteen Die When Tenement is Burned.” 2-19-1924, p. 1.)
Feb 20, NYT: “Investigations by the Fire Marshal, the District Attorney, the Tenement House Department and the police have failed thus far to establish the cause of the fire which swept through the five-story tenement at 397 Madison Street, on the lower east side, yesterday morning, causing the death of thirteen persons, seven of whom were children.
“It was found that the flames started in the cellar, probably in a pile of rubbish, but there was no evidence of the probable cause. A relative of one of the victims told the police that the fire followed the explosion of a still, but the investigators found nothing to substantiate this theory.
“Louis Schoenfeld of 92 Lewis Street, who was found by the police in the entrance of the building when the fire was discovered and who was detained for questioning, was released a few hours later. The police were convinced he had nothing to do with the fire, although they said he had acted suspiciously when seized.
“Two charred baby carriages, found in the hallway on the first floor, were examined but offered no clew for the reason that the first and second floors of the building were the least damaged, the stairways of those two floors, in fact, being virtually intact. The flames apparently had swept up the rear stairway to the third floor, where they mushroomed through the hallways and to the floors above. The reason they left the halls and entered the apartments so quickly, the Fire Marshall said, was due to the fact that the panic-stricken tenants opened their doors and then, leaving them open, ran to the windows and raised them, creating a draft.
“The thirteen bodies were identified at the Bellevue morgue by relatives and friends. The victims, as established by these identifications were:
Barrett, William, 36 years old.
Barrett, Nellie, 35 years old, his wife.
Barrett, Margaret, 6 years old.
Barrett, Catherine, 4 years old.
Barrett, William, Jr., 4 years old.
Harkaway, Mrs. Francis, 48 years old.
Harkaway, Felix, 12 years old.
Harkaway, John, 10 years old.
Harkaway, Francis, 8 years old.
Smith, Mrs. Bessie, 60 years old.
Bober, Benjamin, 35 years old.
Bober, Ida, 35 years old, his wife.
Bober, 10 years old.
….
“Dr. Charles Norris, Chief Medical Examiner, who was at the scene of the fire an hour after it started, said that all of the victims except Baber probably died of suffocation. He praised the work of both the Fire and Police Departments, and said that the entire block might easily have been wiped out. He said that in the crowded districts of Vienna and Berlin such fires were impossible, because every partition in each building was provided with a fire stop.
“Frederick Kuehnle, Chief Inspector of Buildings, said the burned tenement was completed, according to his records, on Dec. 30, 1884. He explained that in such a building it was hard to stop a fire because the wainscotings in the old-law tenements were of wood. There was nothing in the Tenement House law to remedy this condition, he added. He said there should be legislation to cover this defect and that fireproof halls and stairways, with fire-retarding partitions, should be required.
“Michael O’Sullivan, Chief Inspector of the Old Building Bureau of the Tenement House Department, said the building had complied in every way with the law and had a fire-escape in the rear and a scuttle to the roof. Asked if he considered the tenement a firetrap, he said: ‘If that building is classified as a firetrap, then all other buildings similar in construction are firetraps also.’ His department, he said, made its last inspection of the premises on June 8, 1923. The last violation against the place was recorded in November, 1922, when a small pile of lumber was found in the cellar.
“The joint owners of the tenement were William Feinberg, a lawyer, of 51 Chambers Stret, and Israel Gordon, of 1,001 Flatbush Avenue, Brooklyn.
“In 1923 there were 3,784 fires in old-law tenements and 2,245 in new-law houses, the records revealed. Sixty-eight deaths were reported from fires in old-law houses last year and only thirteen in new-law houses.” (New York Times. “Fail to Find Origin of Fire Fatal to 13; Flames Now Believed to Have Started in Rubbish in Cellar of Tenement.” 2-20-1924, p. 12.)
Sources
Middletown Daily Herald, NY. “Thirteen Die When Tenement is Burned.” 2-19-1924, p. 1. Accessed 3-7-2025 at: https://newspaperarchive.com/middletown-daily-herald-feb-19-1924-p-1/
National Fire Protection Association. “Another New York Tenement Holocaust.” NFPA Quarterly, Vol. 17, No. 4, April 1924, pp. 391-392.
National Fire Protection Association. “Loss of Life Fires in Apartments and Tenements.” Quarterly of the National Fire Protection Association, Vol. 34, No. 3, Jan 1942, pp. 237-238, 244, 246-247.
New York Times. “Fail to Find Origin of Fire Fatal to 13; Flames Now Believed to Have Started in Rubbish in Cellar of Tenement.” 2-20-1924, p. 12. Accessed 3-7-2025 at: https://www.nytimes.com/1924/02/20/archives/fail-to-find-origin-of-fire-fatal-to-13-flames-now-believed-to-have.html Also: https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1924/02/20/119035230.html?login=google&auth=login-google&pageNumber=12