Picking up where we left off last week we finished our Part 1 of this column describing the historical account of the November 19, 1916 fire on Main Street as presented to the Rockland town board recently by Town Historian Dr. Joyce Conroy.
The fire that started in the lunch room in the Roscoe Bowling Alley in the Mauer Building was gaining momentum as there were few hydrants and the water pressure in the hoses dropped because the fire hose caught on fire and firemen could not get to the hydrant because the hose was too hot.
Dr. Conroy points out that next door to the Meat Market Bowling Alley building there is the Roscoe Hardware Corporation owned by another man in Middletown the Berner Building and that building goes immediately.
The building next to the Hardware Corporation is the department store owned by Mr. Voorhees and this building is also destroyed by the fire. This building had a tin roof and steel sides and when these heated up the building just blew.
Fortunately the bank building (made of stone) and the Albee building also made of stone stopped the fire on that side of the street.
Roscoe's fire captain at that time sent telegraphs to Liberty and Livingston Manor asking for help. Livingston Manor had a train ready to go with a conductor, engineer and some 50 volunteer firemen on the train there but the Middletown office of the O & W Railroad would not release the train nor was the Liberty train allowed to leave the station.
So Liberty firemen hitched up a wagon with a pumper on it and firemen started up Route 17 which was a dirt road. Livingston Manor firemen got anyone with a car and firemen traveled up to Roscoe on Route 17.
In the mean time the fire has jumped across the street to the Beaverkill House and next to that is a drug store but both go up in flames and several houses are destroyed but with Livingston Manor firemen on the scene they were able to save a house by hanging rugs out the windows and on the roof and used a bucket brigade to wet them down and it saved the house.
Dynamite was used near the Bank to slow down the spread of the fire so that it could not get to the freight and train station and the wind calmed down.
Liberty photographer Otto Hillig who had been on a cross country tour returned to Liberty that night, heard about the fire, and came to Roscoe and took pictures and these were made part of Dr. Conroy's outstanding presentation about this 1916 Roscoe fire.
History is a big part of society and thanks to historians like Dr. Conroy who preserve it and deliver interesting presentations.
This historic photo taken by the late Otto Hillig of Liberty shows the former Beaverkill House on Roscoe's Main Street engulfed in flames in the November 19, 1916 fire that destroyed much of that hamlet's business district.
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