Photo by Rey Lopez courtesy of Josephine Old Town Bar
Josephine Old Town bar
The Office of Historic Alexandria's Historic Happy Hour series heads to Josephine, the French brasserie in the former Columbia Firehouse, for the story of the Jan. 18, 1827 blaze that destroyed 53 buildings in Alexandria.
This week's event is hosted at Josephine's Brasserie and Bar, which occupies the Romanesque-style building that previously housed the Columbia No. 4 fire company, at 109 S. Saint Asaph St., on Thursday, August 6, from 5 - 7 p.m.
Dr. Jim McClellan, retired History Professor, Dean Emeritus, Northern Virginia Community College, and Fellow of Dundee and Angus College will discuss the historic fire. Ten percent of all checks will benefit Historic Alexandria. Here's more about the historic fire, from the City of Alexandria's Office of Historic Alexandria:
Alexandria's Great Fire began on the morning of Jan. 18, 1827, in the warehouse of Green's furniture factory on Royal Street — a building full of sawdust, lumber, fabric and glue. The alarm went out around 9 a.m. with the thermometer reading 13 degrees. Flames jumped to Prince Street and ran all the way down to Union, and for roughly five hours the fire moved house to house, with residents dragging furniture into the streets and neighboring buildings catching one after another.
Alexandria was still part of the District of Columbia at the time, and help came from across the river: Congress adjourned, the Navy Yard and public offices closed, the Marine Corps marched down in a body, War Department artificers arrived with tools to pull down and blow up buildings in the fire's path, and the toll gates at the bridges were thrown open. Roughly 300 men came from the Washington Navy Yard alone.
By the time it was contained, the fire had destroyed 53 buildings and caused $107,277 in damage — but claimed only one life. One of the more striking accounts of the day comes from Michael Shiner, an enslaved man leased to the Navy Yard, whose journal recorded the order to send every mechanic, laborer and engine out of the yard and the speed with which Washington and Georgetown men turned out to help. The blaze was the first of several that shaped Alexandria's firefighting history, followed by major fires in 1855, 1871 and 1922, and it remains part of the story told at the Friendship Firehouse Museum. which holds furniture made by the Green factory in later decades.
For more information, visit Alexandriava.gov/America250.
