The works fires: the anchor plants burn, one by one

1851–2013 · THE PLANTS' OWN FIRE RECORD, APART FROM THE TOWN'S

The town fires of 1872 and 1886 stand in this section at full size, and they are not this article's subject. The fire of September 5, 1872, in fact, spared the works: when the smoke cleared, in the city historian's words, "the factories along the north and south races — the town's livelihood — were untouched." The plants had their own fire record, kept plant by plant and year by year, and it is a major-events record in its own right: each of the city's anchor works burned at least once, and the rebuilding after each fire is part of how the industrial city was made.

Wagner's brewery, 1851: John Wagner had operated a brewery and distillery in Mishawaka since 1839. In 1851 his business burned. Two years later he relocated to North Center Street and built again — the 1853 building whose date still stands on its front — and the brewery he refounded there passed in 1870 to Clemens Dick and Adolph Kamm, on its way to becoming Kamm & Schellinger. The fire is the works-fire record's first entry: what burned was the town's first brewery; what was rebuilt became its longest-lived one.

Dodge, 1881: Wallace Dodge had moved his factory to Union Street in 1879 and incorporated the Dodge Manufacturing Company in 1880. In 1881 fire destroyed the factory — struck by lightning, in the account the Discover Indiana record carries — and the works was uninsured, which Timothy Edward Howard's county history calls a heavy blow. The histories agree on what followed: Dodge rebuilt at once, and rebuilt larger, and patented the Independence Wood Split Pulley on July 4, 1882, the invention the company's fame rests on. One later telling conflicts, and it is printed rather than resolved: a South Bend Tribune history summary of March 15, 2022, has the fire delaying the firm, "resuming its business in 1888." Against it stand Howard (1907) and the company's own tradition of an immediate rebuilding, and the dated patent of 1882, which a firm out of business until 1888 could not easily have taken out. Both tellings stand here; the 1888 date is carried as the conflict it is.

The Kamm brewery: the explosion and the fire of 1950: After Repeal the Kamm & Schellinger plant expanded and modernized, and then, in the city historian's summary sentence, "a fatal explosion, a destructive fire, and strong competition from larger breweries, though, brought the end for Kamm & Schellinger in 1951." The fire can be dated from the building's own later record: in 1950 a serious fire swept through the brewery building on Center Street, and the brewery closed in 1951 — the Tribune's retrospective of December 10, 2017, concurs in the 1950 fire and the 1951 closing. The explosion cannot be dated from any source reached: De Kever records it as fatal and gives neither its year nor the name of the man it killed, and no dated account of it was found. That is a named gap, and its settler is the Mishawaka Enterprise and South Bend Tribune morgue record, with the Indiana Industrial Board's accident reports, where a fatal brewery explosion of the period would have left a dated file.

The Dodge ground again, 2013: The foundry at 500 Union Street, at West Ninth Street — Dodge's ground, by then the closed Reliance/RMG foundry, shut since 2006 — burned on the night of February 11, 2013. The fire took the steel shop building, then in use storing an estimated 200 to 250 cars, boats and recreational vehicles. The building was nearly levelled. Fire investigators could not enter the ruins until March 4, and the cause was never determined. Nothing was rebuilt: the fire closed the works-fire record on the plant that had opened it in the modern era, on the same Union Street ground Dodge had rebuilt after 1881.

Ball Band, and the furnace era — the record's thin places, printed at their true size: The city's largest works left no great fire in the record reached. De Kever's history records no Ball Band fire; the company's own house organ, in a Fire Prevention Week item of about 1948, counts the works' ordinary fire load instead — "so far this year Ball-Band has had 27 fires which caused approximately $6,128.04 in damage" — a plant that burned in small ways constantly and, on the record reached, never in one great event. The furnace era is thinner still: no dated fire at the St. Joseph Iron Works or its successor furnace and plow works appears in the histories read.

Sources:

1. Peter J. De Kever, Mishawaka: A History (City of Mishawaka, commissioned history) — Wagner's business burned in 1851 and the North Center Street removal two years later; the 1872 fire sparing the factories on the races; Dodge's factory destroyed by fire in 1881 and quickly rebuilt; the Kamm & Schellinger end — "a fatal explosion, a destructive fire" — in 1951.
2. Timothy Edward Howard, A History of St. Joseph County, Indiana (1907) — the 1881 Dodge fire, uninsured, "a heavy blow," and the rebuilding.
3. South Bend Tribune, history summary, March 15, 2022 — the conflicting telling, the firm "resuming its business in 1888"; and the Tribune's Kamm retrospective, December 10, 2017 — the major fire of 1950 and the 1951 closing.
4. Firehouse.com, March 5, 2013, carrying the South Bend Tribune's reporting — the fire of February 11, 2013, at the former Dodge/RMG foundry, 500 Union Street; 200–250 vehicles stored in the steel shop building; the building nearly levelled; investigators' entry on March 4; cause undetermined.
5. Ball-Band house organ, c. 1948 (Michiana Memory collection) — the 27 fires and $6,128.04 in damage "so far this year," the only fire accounting of the works reached.