Industry: Peninsular Stove Company, Detroit, MI

This plant was located at West Fort and Eighth Street in Detroit.

Rail service: 

Notes

Time Line

1909. June. Absolutely without warning and with a rending and crashing of timbers which sent workmen on every floor flying for their lives, a section of flooring in one of the main buildings of the Peninsular Stove Co., Detroit, gave way, carrying with the wreckage at least two men, who have thus far been rescued and possibly more who are still unaccounted for. The building was used as an office building and warehouse. On every one of the six floors, stoves were piled rows deep. The building contained practically the whole stock of the company to be sold for the winter of 1909-1910. A gas pipe in the basement burst, starting a fire which crept steadily through the ruins.

The wrecked building was built in 1877 by the Havemeyer Sugar Co. and has been occupied by the stove works for the past 27 years. The floors have been rebuilt several times and the timbers in the basement were comparatively new. Examination shows that the sixth floor, with its heavy burden of stored stoves, crashed down, carrying the fifth, fourth and third through the second, which held partially, to the first, which also held partially, and then into the basement. [SEB-1909-0618]