What Lit the Roof: The Notre Dame Fire of 1879

23 April 1879

The documented facts: The fire that destroyed the second Main Building at Notre Dame is among the most fully narrated events in this history — the Notre Dame section tells its course: on the morning of Wednesday, 23 April 1879, flames were seen from the roof; the Minims, the school's youngest boys, out on their play yard in the warm morning, were the first to raise the alarm, around ten o'clock, and a fire engine was dispatched from South Bend and arrived too late. The western winds carried the fire from the Main Building to four more — the infirmary, St. Francis Old Men's Home, Music Hall and the Minims' Hall. The dome's supports burned through and its statue crashed down into the interior, spreading the fire; in about three hours the college was gone, and no one was killed or badly hurt. Press estimates reprinted in the university's own paper put the loss, direct and indirect, at some $200,000. Father Sorin was in Montreal, about to embark on his thirty-sixth Atlantic crossing; he reached the ruins on 27 April and vowed the rebuilding that produced the present Main Building and, in time, its golden dome. Every part of the fire's course is documented — except its beginning.

The open question, exactly: what started it. The record answers in its own words, at both ends of the intervening century and a half. The Scholastic, the university's own weekly, said it flatly in May 1879, in the same issues that narrated the destruction: "The origin of the fire is unknown." The University of Notre Dame Archives, in its present-day account of the fire, keeps the question in the same state: "The origins of the fire are uncertain, but many theories point to construction work being done on the pitch roof of Main Building." That sentence is printed here for exactly what it is — the archives' report of where the theories point, not a finding. No contemporary verdict was reached in the sources this history could gather: no inquest, no official determination, no named witness to an ignition appears in the university's account or in the campus paper's coverage. Workmen on a pitch roof, in a building lit and heated as 1879 buildings were, give the theorists their material; the record gives them nothing firmer, and this section gives the theory no firmer standing than the archives give it. A fire whose progress was watched by hundreds and written down within the week, and whose first spark no document names — that is the whole of the mystery, and it is enough: the best-documented disaster in the young university's life opens with a cause its own institution still prints as uncertain.

Sources:

1. University of Notre Dame Archives, "The Great Fire of 1879" (sites.nd.edu/ndarchives) — the Minims' alarm about 10 a.m., the South Bend engine arriving too late, the five buildings and the western winds, Sorin in Montreal, and the sentence on origins: "The origins of the fire are uncertain, but many theories point to construction work being done on the pitch roof of Main Building."
2. Notre Dame Scholastic, vol. XII (May 1879), archives.nd.edu — the fire's narration and press comments; "The origin of the fire is unknown"; the $200,000 loss estimate as reprinted from the press.
3. University of Notre Dame, "The heart of Notre Dame" (stories.nd.edu) — the statue crashing through the burning dome supports; three hours; no deaths; Corby's promise to reopen on time.
4. This history, Notre Dame section — the fire's course and the rebuilding, Edbrooke's commission, ground broken 17 May 1879, classes reopened 8 September 1879.