Friday, January 08, 2010

Misc. Pix #4

Posted by Buckles at 1/08/2010 05:48:00 AM

6 comments:

Bob Cline said...

I've never seen an aerial view of the Hartford Fire so I'm guessing this is one of them. What is all lined up on the right? Was that an open air menagerie?
Bob

08 January, 2010 06:38
Frank Ferrante said...

If this IS the Hartford fire, you get a true sense of how tragic it was. That entire area was filled with people. The pictures that I have seen in the past could never do justice to the scope of the devastation. ~frank

08 January, 2010 09:00
Richard Reynolds said...

Thsi is an aerial view of the aftermath of the Hartford fire in 1944.

Luckily the menagerie tent was not put up or it may have been involved as well with sparks and burning pieces blowing onto its top.

As we see, the menagerie was an open air side-walled affair. The two side-by-side giraffe wagons are at the center top and just below them the gorilla cage. The other cages are in lined up to the right and left. I suppose that lot size limitations prevented the menagerie tent from being set up. That was a rather common occurrence at the time and before.

For 1945 the menagerie tent top was discontinued altogether after the Pittsburgh stand (July 29 – Aug 4). There was a severe manpower shortage caused by the War taking so many working men away.

When I went to the evening show in Atlanta on Monday Nov.. 5th, we were surprised when, after going through the main entrance marquee, we walked into topless menagerie - -first time I’d ever experienced that.

08 January, 2010 12:44
Buckles said...

We showed Hartford with the Blue Show in 1994 almost 50 years to the day after the fact. Petie Kinosh drove a bunch of us to the fire site and pointed out where the big top had been spotted and so forth.
I was surprised to see that the lot remained undeveloped after all those years and he explained that an attempt had been made to construct some public housing but with so many arguments against the prospect of living over such a death scene, the project quickly abandoned.
As far as I know the area remains blighted.

08 January, 2010 13:40
Frank Ferrante said...

If I'm not

08 January, 2010 17:22
Frank Ferrante said...

Buckles -

The area is now a park with memorial monuments denoting the different areas of the lot. The following link has pictures of the park and the monuments.

http://www.hartford.gov/fire/hartfordcircusfire/gallerypages/monument.htm

The 50th Anniversary was on 7/6/94, the ground-breaking for the park was on 7/6/04 and the dedication of the park was on 7/6/05. ~frank

08 January, 2010 17:26

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