The picture shown below has been hanging on the wall at Fire Headquarters for years. It was donated by Deputy Chief Jack Boesen many years ago. It has a label on it that says:
Unknown Fire on Atlantic Street, 1951
Jack Dillon, John Boesen and Captain Frank Fox.
Jack Dillon, John Boesen and Captain Frank Fox.
I finally got around to taking it off the wall and scanning it high resolution. I color balanced the photo and generally cleaned it up a bit in Photoshop, giving it a bit of “pop” that was missing from the faded original.
In addition, I scoured the FD archives for fires on Atlantic Street in 1951 and found none. But after an in-depth search in the digital archives of the Advocate, I found a single major fire in 1951 on Atlantic Street. It occurred on the second floor of the Augusta Building at 485-503 Atlantic Street. I am pretty confident that this is the fire at which the photo was taken from. Sounds like the firefighters did a tremendous job saving the entire building. Here you go, read it for yourself.
