Downtown Bloomington Fire

Just after midnight on June 19, 1900 a great fire began sweeping through downtown Bloomington. By 8am the next morning, 45 buildings (including the 3rd McLean County Courthouse) in 4.5 square blocks were reduced to little more than rubble.

The fire began in the Model Laundry building in the 100 block of East Monroe Street (between East and Monroe Streets). Old equipment, combined with low water pressure and high winds, made it hard for firefighters to combat the fire and why there was so much damage. Fire stopped at Jefferson Street and the courthouse.

The first building to open after the fire was the Griesheim building on North Main Street in December 1900, just 175 days after the fire (unfortunately, that building would be lost to arson in the 1980s). Other buildings soon followed.

Pieces of the third courthouse were used to create the Summit street bridge in Miller Park, the skeleton of the dome is in Miller Park (once used by Miller Park Zoo to house birds), and several other column capitals are scattered in neighborhoods near downtown Bloomington. Cinders from the fire were used to pave roads at Evergreen Memorial Cemetery and in Sarah’s Garden at the David Davis Mansion.

Arthur Pillsbury, Paul Moratz, and George Miller were the three architects primarily responsible for rebuilding downtown. Pillsbury himself designed over a dozen new buildings for downtown after the fire.

During his career, Pillsbury designed and renovated approximately 16 garages, 17 banks, 22 barns, 32 churches, 73 businesses, 104 schools, 435 homes, and numerous other types of buildings. As of 2013, 110 of the homes Pillsbury designed in Bloomington-Normal remain standing (though this number has likely shrank).