History Pages: 55 - The Big Fire of 1894

Fire, flood, and earthquake are the most important historical disaster categories in Santa Cruz. In 1894, a fire destroyed nearly the entire wedge-shaped downtown block bounded by Pacific Avenue, Front Street, and Cooper Street. A number of structures across those streets also burned. The resulting rebuilding created a different look for that area - a look that remained intact until the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. At right is a pre-fire view of the Pacific-Cooper corner from ~1890. The three most prominent buildings in this photo burned in 1894. They are: Mike Leonard's saloon (far left), the 1866 County courthouse, and William Ely's first "Block". In between Leonard's building and the courthouse, the 1882 Hall of Records (Octagon) can be seen, which remains today.

The middle photograph, of the same landscape after the fire, taken from near the north end of the block, shows the remains of the courthouse and Ely's Block, and that most of the intervening buildings burned. The two surviving structures on the left were later absorbed into the St. George Hotel - part of what gave the hotel its eclectic appearance. The building partly-seen at far left, with the projecting oriel window, is described as the "1891 C. B. Pease Building" in The Sidewalk Companion to Santa Cruz Architecture (2005 book) (p.166, item 47).

In the bottom postcard photo, of the St. George in ~1930, those projecting oriel windows remain from the 1891 structure, even after the hotel got a Spanish Colonial Revival-style remodel. At far left in this image is the Zoccoli's deli building, which remains today, having survived both the fire and the 1989 earthquake.

Also lost to the fire were a number of buildings across Front Street, which together comprised what's now referred to as the Front Street Chinatown.

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