In 1870,a “Mr. Hamlin”  erected a building on Main St.  It contained four small stores and in 1887 it was purchased by Marshall Tilden who, in in 1894, completely remodeled and added two floors to it. Upon completion of the remodeling it was called, “the most ornamental three story block in the city”. The “Tilden Block” was then purchased by the Jordan brothers in 1906 and became known as “the Jordan Block”. On the morning of November 23, 1916, it was completely destroyed by fire.

Officer Michael Cronin was on the Main street beat. That night and he smelled smoke some time before the fire was actuaIIy discovered. He searched the street but found nothing and thought that the.smoke had come from a passing locomotive. A few minutes later he spotted a small flame

on the, second floor of the Bijou theater. Cronin attempted to activate alarm box No. 43 but it did not work, and so he had to run all the way to the Bank Street fire house to raise the alarm. There were also problems there and so the alarm had to be turned in by hand, and it was 3 A.M. before fire crews arrived at the building, but by then the fire had spread from the Bijou into the Jordan Block.

All Willimantic’s fire companies responded and the firefighters set eight streams onto the buildings and extinguished the Bijou blaze, but the fire was raging inside the Jordan Block on the second and third floors. The fire exploded boxes of ammunition on the second floor. Fortunately, most of the ammunition was on the first floor in the front and was carried out of the building before the fire reached it but a contemporary observer exclaimed that Main Street sounded like a European battlefield. A newspaper reported that “a considerable amount of powder” that was removed from the basement. It took several hours to extinguish the blaze but firefighters had to remain on the scene until late in the evening to extinguish hot spots. The day was a chilly one and the firefighters’ coats were covered in ice from the water being played on the fire. The building had been occupied mainly by the Jordan Hardware Company which experienced the heaviest financial loss which was considered, at the time, to be the worst that Willimantic had ever experienced. A tailor shop which had been located on the building’s second floor as well as the Thread City Cyclers rooms. The Natchaug Lodge of the Knights of Pythias had a lodge on the third floor. All suffered total losses. The headquarters of the Willimantic Trust Company was on the ground floor but received only smoke and water damage.  Due to the intensity of the fire, fifteen wires of the Western Union Telegraph Company that linked New York and Boston which had been attached to the rear of Jordan building were burned    and that led to an interruption of service between the two cities. Firefighters were thankful that there was not a strong wind that night since the fire could easily have spread along the south side of Main Street which, in 1916, was heavily settled with tenements and businesses. Several firefighters were slightly hurt while fighting the blaze. William “Lefty” Smith of the Alert Hose Company came into contact with a live electric wire and was knocked unconscious. He was rushed to Saint Joseph’s Hospital and revived. Another firefighter fell from a ladder but was not seriously hurt. Frank Lincoln of the Hilltops and Roy Downer of the Alerts received badly cut heads from falling glass and were taken to the hospital for stitches. Fortunately, no lives were lost in the fire which was estimated to have caused a loss of over $150,000, the majority of the loss being incurred by the Jordan Company which was insured for only $45,000. But the day after the fire, the Jordan Brothers promised to rebuild and, in the Summer of 1919, their new building opened for business. The building still exists at 670-676 Main Street although the architectural features of the original building are hidden by the present façade. Log on to threadcity.us for more photos and articles and to discover more facts about Willimantic, Windham and surrounding towns