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., 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.
Creator
Rosenberg, Charles G., artist
Date
c1850
Location
Historical Society of Pennsylvania HSP Bb 83 P 544
