Details
Creator Rosenberg, Charles G., artist.
Contributor Leefe, George E., printer.
Title The great conflagration in Philadelphia on Tuesday July 9th 1850. [graphic] : Terrific explosion of saltpetre [sic] in Water Street. Houses destroyed by the fire 500 _ Killed 57_Wounded 115_ Loss of property over one million of dollars. / C. P.[sic] Rosenberg.
Publisher New York: Lith & Pubd. by G. E. Leefe 111 Nassau St
Date c1850
Physical Description 1 print: lithograph, hand-colored; 36 x 49 cm.(14 x 19.25 in.)
Description Disaster scene showing the commotion in front of the partially destroyed stores of John Brock & Co., and Gordon and Berger at 39 (i.e., 100 block) North Water Street. People hold a crowd back as fire fighters attend to the collapsing building spewing a cloud of smoke. A family, including a mother and child, flee past fire fighters rushing to a fallen comrade as debris falls down upon them. Also shows a man kneeling near the Vine Street Wharf as another stands in the center of the view with his arms up in the air. The explosion emanated from a fire started by the friction of a hoisting-machine igniting a large store of gunpowder and saltpeter in the Brock, and Gordon and Berger building. The blaze that spread about one square mile between Front and Callowhill streets destroyed actually about 367 houses and stores. Several people were blown into the Delaware River and residents evacuated as a result of the explosion.
Notes Not in Wainwright.
Philadelphia on Stone
POS 329
Historical Society of Pennsylvania: Bb 83 P 544
Rosenberg, a landscape, portrait, and figures painter, worked in New York and Philadelphia during the 1850s and 1860s.
Subject Explosions -- Pennsylvania -- Philadelphia.
Warehouses -- Pennsylvania -- Philadelphia.
Fires -- Pennsylvania -- Philadelphia.
Fire fighters -- Pennsylvania -- Philadelphia.
Disaster victims -- Pennsylvania -- Philadelphia.
Genre Lithographs -- Hand-colored -- 1840-1850.
Location Historical Society of Pennsylvania | HSP Bb 83 P 544