Now That's A Fire!

“If you want to find a dried fruit packing house, just look for the fire.” I wrote that a few months back, and it becomes a more accurate statement each time I look. I just found another newspaper archive site, and as is usual, started off with a search on ‘“packing house” fire’, and immediately got another hundred articles to look at. Two of them were particularly cool and worth sharing; today's will be the famous Rosenberg Brothers November 1906 fire.

In 1906, Rosenberg Brothers had a dried fruit packing house on the north side of the San Jose yard along Ryland Street. Their packing house was closest to the river, with Inderridden and Warren Dried Fruit in warehouses further east along Ryland Street. That plant burned spectacularly in November 1906; I previously reported on the fire back in May, and while the San Jose Mercury's article lines up factually with the San Jose Evening News article I cited before, the Mercury's reporter did a much better job of setting the scene. Better yet, the Mercury was printing photos in their paper back in 1906.

And, oh, was it ever a fire, with the San Jose Mercury describing it as the most damaging fire in San Jose history. The fire not only destroyed Rosenberg Brothers, but threatened Inderridden’s packing house as well as all the freight cars in the yard.

Rosenberg Brothers was a block in length, three floors high, with a wooden frame and corrugated iron roof. It also had fifteen hundred tons of prunes, and two hundred fifty tons more in freight cars against the loading dock. Rosenberg didn’t own the building; it was instead owned by Mrs. J.C. Webber of Chicago, probably the heiress of the C. M. Webber and Company who formerly used the plant.

The Mercury did a great job of describing the scene:

“At 1:30 o’clock yesterday morning a switching crew on the night shift in the railroad yards saw flames in the boiler-room of the Rosenberg packing house. The engineer at once sent out the railroad fire call, four long drawn blasts, in succession. Another engine at work in the east end of the yards heard the warning whistle and repeated it. Then another took it up and further spread the alarm. Someone living across the street called the fire department by telephone…. but in the meantime the flames had spread in the long warehouse from end to end, roof to basement. It was aflame… the Rosenberg packing house was provided with an underground tank where a car load of crude oil used as fuel could be stored. There were probably 5000 gallons of oil in the tank last night.”

One of the first goals for the railroad crews was to try to rescue nearby freight cars:

"While the department was endeavoring to keep the fire from spreading to the packing house of the J. B. Inderrieden Company adjoining the Rosenberg property, a large force of railroad men were working to save the crowded yards from destruction.
Three or four switch engines and crews were called into service. The burning cars were coupled to locomotives and pulled to empty tracks where they could burn without causing further damage to neighboring cars. But in spite of all that, fourteen cars were destroyed, seven of them only until the trucks protruded from the ashes, and seven more damaged almost beyond repair..."
By six o'clock the Southern Pacific had about 100 Japanese laborers on the scene to clear away the wreckage of the cars. At that hour all that was left of the building owned and occupied by Rosenberg Brothers was a long heap of glowing prunes and ashes from the center of which, high on its brick foundation, the wreck of the boiler protruded.

I'm a bit surprised at the Japanese laborers, for I hadn't thought of Japanese immigrants as likely section hands. But the SP was hiring Japanese in those days.

The photo accompanying the article shows the skeletal boxcars clearly, along with the firewall and Inderridden warehouse visible through the smoke. The reporter was also kind enough to report on those freight cars for those of us interested in the freight cars that would make it to San Jose: one Armour refrigerator car, and thirteen boxcars, three from the Santa Fe, two from the Chicago North Western, one from the Rock Island, and the remaining eight from the “Harriman System” (aka Southern Pacific and Union Pacific). That's not too surprising a mix if the fruit was headed to Chicago, but perhaps a bit midwest-focused if the crop was going to New York.

One last discovery from this article was the dangers of prunes; I'd never thought of them as incendiary, but obviously I was just being naive:

"The fruit was processed and highly inflammable, radiant heat so intense that for hours streams of water were played constantly upon the twelve or fifteen houses on the opposite side of the street to prevent them taking fire.... Prunes burn much like soft coal full of gases, giving forth a blue blaze and holding fire for an incredibly long time. Chief Tonkin said it did practically no good to turn water on burning fruit. A cloud of steam arose, hung overhead for a time, and in a few minutes the prunes were burning as fiercely as ever."

It's a wonder we aren't heating our houses with prunes, but I'll bet the firewood lobby had something to do with it.

Rosenberg Brothers Burns Again

One of the easiest ways to spot a dried fruit packing plant back in the day was to look for things on fire, for it seemed like the things were spontaneously combusting on a regular basis. Doing searches on "packing house fire" on Google News Archive or the California Digital Newspaper Collection turns up quite a selection of infernos from inside and outside California, though there's plenty of perils-of-packing-house stories from within California to keep me busily reading. (Examples? How about this, this, this, or this?)

I'd mentioned last time how one of the big non-cooperative packers, Rosenberg Brothers, got burned out of their building on Ryland Street in San Jose back in late 1906. They ended up moving down along the "narrow gauge" on Sunol Street for the next ten years to the areas which I model. Then, in 1917, they turn up in the "hopefully less inflammatory" Santa Clara. I was being a bit cheeky with that comment, but didn't realize how right I was.

After the 1906 fire, Rosenberg Brothers moved to an unnamed site on San Carlos Street for the 1907 season according to a contemporary city directory, but ended up in 1908 on Sunol Street near Auzerais - an address that didn't match any packing houses I knew of. That corner was starting to get busy, with the future Del Monte cannery on the northeast corner, a Standard Oil depot on the southwest corner, but no known large industries on the other two corners. With some additional searches, I found a clue - a search for "packing house fire" turned up a news story noting that the new plant burned in August, 1915. The most detailed story is the August 7, 1915 San Jose Evening News article, which declares that the fire started in a "huge pile of apricot pits near the railroad track."   The resulting flames spread into the brick packing house, and in spite of the firewalls, turned it into a pile of very hot bricks by the next morning.  Except, of course, for the fire still burning in the remains of the underground fuel oil tank:

At noon today 5000 gallons of fuel oil were burning in an underground tank near the ruined packing house.  The burning oil sent smoke hundreds of feet in the air, casting a gloomy pall over the whole country around the site of the fire.

It didn't help that the plant was outside the city limits, and thus wasn't protected by San Jose's fire department. Those cheaper property taxes also come with less services, which must have been sub-optimal when your business is rapidly becoming carbonized. I don't know if the packing houses were out here because of proximity to the growers, less traffic, better rail access, or cheaper taxes, but access to fire departments seems like more than a "nice to have" when picking locations for a packing house.

H. M. Barngrover, manager of the packing company, says he notified the San Jose fire department very shortly after the fire broke out, but that no engine was on the ground for several hours.
Chief Haley says that since the fire was far out of the San Jose district, the packing company manager should have at once taken up the matter with the mayor or with Haley, and should not have expected the firemen to answer the call until either the chief or the mayor had been notified…

It's worth mentioning that the manager, H.M. Barngrover - Harvey M. Barngrover - was another one of the Valley fruit industry men who keeps popping up over and over - it was a small valley even then for folks in the industry, whether that industry was prunes or web browsers. Harvey had been a vice president at Anderson Barngrover, the equipment manufacturer which became FMC in 1907, and I assume he'd been the namesake for the Barngrover part of that business. He headed over to manage the Rosenberg Brothers packing house some time before 1910, and left to be a cannery manager after 1918.)

FIREBUG CONFESSES TO I.W.W. PLOT The total loss from the 1915 fire was reported as $350,000. And fires like this didn't just happen from carelessness.  My original hint about the fire came from a Sausalito News report in September that a Wobbly - a supporter of the International Workers of the World, and the terrorist boogeyman of a hundred years ago - confessed to having lit the fire as part of a chain of actions against big business.

Deserted by Pals, Weak From Hunger, Man Surrenders to Watsonville Officer
Watsonville: James McGill, a man with a shifting eye and a face which betokens at least a weak character and mind, who declares he is a nurse by profession, but more recently has been engaged in the I. W. W. campaign of terrorism throughout Central California, surrendered himself to the police here on September 24 and made a confession which is believed to be true by local officers....
...he pled guity to setting fire to a grain warehouse at Lodi about ten days ago...planned the destruction of the George Hooke cannery on Walker Street [in Watsonville]... McGill had a part in the destruction of the Rosenberg Brothers cannery at San Jose on August 26...McGill declares his part in the affair was the stealing of some waste from a boxcar in the Southern Pacific yards in San Jose which was used in starting the blaze... set fire to a big lumber yard [in Anderson]."

There's some odd and incorrect facts there - the wrong date for the fire [Thanks, Sausalito News, for wasting a half hour of my life trying to find a mention of the fire around that date], and the description of the Rosenberg Brothers plant as a cannery rather than a dried fruit packing house. But if you were going to go to central casting to find a character to play the dissolute socialist torching our capitalist institutions, you'd be awfully happy with Mr. McGill and his "shifting eye... and weak character and mind."

The nice thing about the San Jose Evening News is their political bent was just a teensy bit less conservative. They labelled themselves as the "friend of the grower" in one editorial, and their only vice appeared to be baiting E. A. and J.O Hayes, the publishers of the Mercury Herald editor of the Mercury Herald and potential candidate for governor (and son).

Santa Clara County Fruit Exchange But I'm curious about where Rosenberg had relocated, and whether they were in the collection of buildings that would eventually host Del Monte, or if they were in some other building I hadn't known about. The Evening News reminds us that the building had been the Santa Clara County Fruit Exchange, one of the early dried fruit co-operatives, and a plant I'd never located. The article narrows the building's location a bit more, noting that the packing house itself was on Sunol Street, and too close for comfort to the Standard Oil depot (the brick buildings you still see at Auzerais and Sunol) and across the street from the Santa Clara Valley Mill and Lumber yard at Sunol and San Carlos. All this suggests the plant was on the west side of Sunol. The 1915 Sanborn maps can't confirm this, for they don't show anything along Sunol St. Later maps show the block of San Carlos, Sunol, Auzerais, and Lincoln as mostly occupied by the Peninsular Railway interurban yard north of the Western Pacific tracks, but those 1939-era aerial photos from U.C. Santa Cruz show some . I'd assumed this was virgin land, but if the Sanborn maps had been scouted after the fire, I'd imagine the demise of the packing house would have left quite a big void on the map.

It's too bad the packing house disappeared, for it sounds like a substantial and interesting building, purpose-built for storing dried fruit. The July 16, 1892 Pacific Rural Press even reported on the creation of the Fruit Exchange and the plans for the new building: "The " Exchange Buildings "will most probably be fireproof, two-story brick, contain the best modern appliances for grading and packing fruit." Well, maybe not "most probably".

The photos above (from the Sunsweet Story by Robert Couchman) show that the plant was like in its early days; unlike most of the industrial photos of the day, it looks like a pretty nice neighborhood with the trees along Sunol Street bordering the lumberyard, and a warm summer day "let's hang out on the loading dock" kind of feel. If I was modeling the early 1900's, I'd be desperate to know whether the plant was ever served by rail, but unfortunately the Sanborn maps before 1915 don't extend out beyond the city limits to hint at the arrangement of the plant.

The photos also hint at the arrangement of the plant: the long warehouses extended north-south along Sunol St. A boilerhouse, separate from the main warehouse, sat along the railroad tracks close to the intersection of Auzerais and Sunol. The pile of apricot pits must've been somewhere close to the boiler house and tracks, potentially behind the boiler house to the left.

So, yes, I was right. Rosenberg Brothers probably left for Santa Clara because San Jose was way too hot for their packing houses. After losing two packing houses in ten years (with one certainly undeserving of its fireproof label), I'm certain they cut their losses and moved somewhere safer.

Rosenberg Brothers History Rosenberg Brothers survived quite a long time for a fruit packer in California. They were founded in 1893 to pack and ship fruit from California. There really were Rosenberg brothers: Max, Abraham, and Adolph, and the last of the brothers died in 1931 leaving behind a chain of packing houses throughout California and Oregon. The Sunsweet Story labels them as the "most successful of the speculative packers" in the late 1920's, working outside the California Prune and Apricot Growers co-op system, sometimes in rather tense relations. Rosenberg Brothers lasted as an independent company until 1947 when they were bought by Consolidated Grocers. They finally disappeared as a concern in 1957; San Jose's own Mayfair Packing bought the dried fruit and walnut operations, and Bonner Packing (the Fresno-based remnant of the company that built the Del Monte Building in Sunnyvale) brought the raisin business in the Fresno area.

[Two historic photos from Sunshine Fruit and Flowers, an 1896 valley booster book. I copied the photos from the Sunsweet Story by Robert Couchman, which reprinted them but cropped out the railroad tracks at the bottom of the photo which cut diagonally across the street, hiding the best clue about the location of the warehouse. Aerial photo from a 1939 photo from U.C. Santa Cruz's aerial photo collection, originally taken by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Captions by me.]

Trains Rolling Over, and Rosenberg Brothers Burns

I really need to model the 1900's. For one thing, I could make really bad trackwork and still be prototypical. Not only do trains roll over on the old narrow gauge line, but the November 10, 1906 San Jose Evening News also mentions that train #36's engine rolled over the previous day near the broad gauge depot (Market Street). Because the article was buried on page three, I suspect engines rolling over wasn't that uncommon an experience.

Up on the front page, you'll find the story that dragged me to this particular issue: the Rosenberg Brothers packing house burned overnight. As the Evening News put it:

Stewed prunes are a drug on the market today, although the supply is said to be a little overdone. Out on Ryland street adjoining the Southern Pacific tracks there are several thousand tons of thoroughly cooked fruit, enough to supply the United States Army for a month to come.
The prunes were stored in the warehouse of the Rosenberg Brothers' company awaiting shipment to the eastern markets. Early this morning, the warehouse took fire and today there is nothing left but a half block of cinders and ashes and many tons of cooked fruit.
FIRE SPREAD FAST
The fire broke out at 1:30 am in the engine room of the packing house, and spread with great rapidity until the whole interior of the building was a mass of flames. When discovered the fire had gained great headway and it was impossible to save the building for destruction.
FOUGHT FIRE BACK
The burned packing house adjoins the plant of the Inderrieden Packing Company and the firemen devoted their energies to preventing the spread of the flames in this direction. After a hard battle the fire was driven back from the Inderridden plant and the loss was confined to the Rosenberg Brothers' packing house.
A train of Southern Pacific freight cars standing upon the track adjoining the warehouse took fire before they could be hauled away and ten loaded cars were burned. A number of small dwellings on the north side of Ryland street were scorched by the extreme heat, but were saved from destruction by the chemical engine.
... It was first feared that George Gonzales, the night watchman employed at the plant, had been burned in the building, but later it was found that he was safe at home where he has been confined for several days by illness.
The plant was in full operation at present and employed a large force of girls and men. It is estimated that there were fully fifty cars of dried prunes, peaches, apricots, and pears in the building and the loss will total $100,000.
MANAGER AWAY
Rosenberg Brothers are big dried fruit packers with headquarters in San Francisco and branches in all leading fruit sections. The local manager is George Hyde. Mr Hyde was in San Francisco when the fire was discovered, having gone there on Friday.

The photo shows the Rosenberg plant a few months earlier, captured by George Lawrence's aerial photo of San Jose. You can see the line of buildings on Ryland Street, helpfully annotated by their owners in whitewash as part of the aerial photo celebration. Abinante and Nola will be in Inderrieden's plant in 1945. You can even see Earl Fruit's plant at the bottom of the photo, as well as the huge expanse of the SP freight house in the middle of the yard.

Interestingly, Rosenberg Brothers was a newcomer to San Jose, only appearing in the city directories in 1906. Time to look through old papers to see hints of what brought them to town.

And yes, the manager of the burned plant, George Hyde, is the same George Hyde that will be building a cannery in Campbell in a few years. Bet he made sure there was a substitute night watchman on hand when the night watchman got sick. George had only been doing the job for a year; the 1905 San Jose City Directory listed him as an orchardist out in Cupertino in 1905. He was still manager of the Rosenberg Brothers plant in 1907, but went back to the orchards in 1908. He'll go back into management in 1910 when he and E. E. Thomas manage their own dried fruit company, then take over the former Campbell Fruit Growers Union in Campbell.

Rosenberg moved their operation to San Carlos St. "near the creek" for the 1907 season, then to the former Santa Clara Valley Fruit Exchange plant on the northwest corner of Sunol and Auzerais Sts, where they stayed from 1908 through 1915. That year, the plant the plant was taken by arson, and Rosenberg moved to hopefully less inflammatory Santa Clara.

Also in Saturday's paper:

• Redding man tries to hold up italian restaurant. John Leishman was refused breakfast because it was too late, so rather than ask "pelase?" he pulled out a gun.
• Updates on the gas-pipe thug murders.
• Maude Adams, the Debbie Reynolds of her time, turns 34.