It was an unusually warm, but windy evening on Sunday, December 11, 1949. It was shortly before 7:00 p.m. when Ruth Ann Brasnar and Merline Frost were walking near Central Junior High (607-611 21st Street) in Rock Island, Illinois. The two eleven-year-olds were on their way to a youth social at a nearby church when they noticed an orange flickering glow coming from three second-floor windows of the junior high. Stopping, they watched and then realized what they were seeing was a fire inside the building.
Ruth Ann and Merline ran to a nearby grocery store and asked the owner to call the fire department. When the fire trucks arrived minutes later, the fire was shooting out of the building. Calls soon went out to Davenport Fire Department and all other local city and volunteer fire departments to assist. Central Junior High was located in the middle of a neighborhood filled with homes, churches, and small businesses. The fire put all other buildings in danger as well.
Central Junior High School originally started as the fourth Rock Island High School building. It opened in September 1902 and served as the high school until the new (and current) Rock Island High School building opened in 1937. After updating and remodeling, the old high school reopened as Central Junior High.
The junior high building sat in a school district complex with Lincoln Elementary School next to Central. A walkway ran from the junior high to the Manual Arts building across the street. School district offices were also located next to the Manual Arts building. As more fire trucks arrived, firefighters were pulled off the Central fire to continuously spray water on the nearby school buildings and houses. Homeowners and people from the growing crowd attempted to hose off nearby homes as sparks flew with 50-mile-per-hour wind. Young boys were tasked with climbing on roofs to pull off shingles if they caught fire. Homeowners tried to remove belongings from their homes, but had nowhere to take the items as the crowds swelled to an estimated 20,000 people and traffic jams began to occur. The fire was easily seen across the Mississippi River in Davenport. Centennial Bridge officials would later report an additional 3,000 cars used the bridge during the fire. The Arsenal bridge and Sylvan Island viaduct were so busy it took nearly 30 minutes to cross the structures during the peak of the fire.
The fire was largely extinguished by 10:00 p.m. Fire departments stayed on scene throughout the night to put out flare-ups. Only the outer shell of the building remained and that was in fragile condition. The next morning, crews were brought in to tear down the remaining walls. There was nothing left of Central Junior High.
Classes were not held for Central, Lincoln, or Manual Arts students as Lincoln and the Manual Arts buildings had suffered water and small fire damage that needed to be fixed before students could return. Then it needed to be decided where the 500 hundred 7, 8, & 9 graders from Central would go. There were an additional 200 junior high students from nearby Franklin Junior High who had been attending Central as Franklin was closed due to a building addition and other improvements being made to the structure. Two-thirds of Franklin students had been placed for the school year at Central.
About 500 hundred of the Central and Franklin students were sent to Rock Island High School while the remaining 200 students were sent to Lincoln Elementary School and the Manual Arts building. Plans immediately began to clear the debris and start design sketches and blueprints for a new school building to be built on the site of Central Junior High.
The estimated loss of the building was $325,000. the cost of building a new structure of similar size was estimated at $1,000,000. The school would receive a little over $300,000 from insurance money.
As for the cause of the fire, the Rock Island Fire Department and the State of Illinois joined forces to try to find a cause for the fire. The building had a brick exterior, but contained wood throughout the interior of the building. As the building was completely gutted and the walls were torn down the next morning for safety; the investigation started with many setbacks. It was known the building had painting going on in the school by workers that Saturday and there had been an event in the auditorium on Friday night.
Maintenance had walked through the building Saturday after the painters left and again on Sunday to make sure everything was ready for school on Monday. At no time were any problems noted. The first assumption was an electrical or wiring issue started the fire around 5:00 p.m. on December 11th and quickly spread through the open spaces between the walls and ceilings. The intense outside wind pushed the fire into the center of the building as windows broke due to the heat. Newly painted walls and stacks of paint cans helped the fire catch hold and spread as well. It all seemed like an unfortunate accident. The only fortunate part of the event was that classes were not in session and no one was hurt during the fire or after.
The Central Junior High fire soon fell from the headlines only weeks later as the tragedy of the St. Elizabeth’s fire in Davenport on January 7, 1950 took over headlines. The two buildings shared many common features that allowed the fire to catch and spread quickly. Both were built with non-flammable materials on the outside (brick for Central and stone for St. Elizabeth’s), but contained wooden materials throughout the interior. Space between the exterior walls and interior wood lathing, space between ceilings and the floors above, and full open attics helped the fire in both buildings spread quickly.
Both buildings had recent work done on the interiors that included painting of the walls. St. Elizabeth’s had also had varnish applied to woodwork the summer before the fire. Central had paint stored in the building as well for upcoming improvement projects. Both events were also hampered by weather. The Central fire was spread by 50-mile-per-hour winds while St. Elizabeth’s fire was hampered by freezing temperatures that caused ice to form while the firemen applied water to the building.
By April, work continued clearing debris from the Central site while the school administration worked to secure funding for a new junior high school. In 1950, Easter Sunday fell on April 9, 1950 with Rock Island school children expecting to have Friday and Monday off for a long weekend.
It was late afternoon of Wednesday, April 5, 1950, that Bryon Mason, 13, and Jack Viviana, 12, were outside playing with two girls from their neighborhood, Patricia (nicknamed Pat) Flaherty and Gay Jean Grant, both 14 years old. As they were playing, the girls told the boys that they were going to start a fire in Lincoln School. Byron later told police that he thought it was a joke so he bet the girls a quarter they would not do it.
The girls soon left the boys indicating they were going to start the fire. The boys ignored them and continued to play until they heard glass breaking near the Lincoln Elementary School. Jack went to the school and saw the girls outside the building. Seeing Pat holding a box of matches, Jack took them from her and the girls ran away. The girls later admitted to going to Gay’s house. While Pat waited outside, Gay went in and took more matches. The two then returned to the school. Gay admitted to breaking the glass of a door earlier with a rock as Pat insisted she do it this time as Pat had broken the glass to get into Central to set the fires. The girls went to the second floor of Lincoln School to Miss Kinsey’s 4th grade room. Pat then lit a wall calendar and wall map on fire. The girls quickly ran out of the building.
The boys in the meantime had decided to try to find the girls again. They saw flames in a second-floor window just as the girls ran out of the building. The girls were heard saying “We did it.” to each other.
The boys ran nine blocks to the police station to report the incident. The fire department was dispatched and they were able to put out a small fire in the second-floor classroom. The damage was estimated to be about $100.
The police went to the girls’ homes and brought them in for questioning. They later brought in 14-year-old Arlene Horsley who lived in the neighborhood for questioning as well.
Pat and Gay quickly admitted to setting the fire at Lincoln Elementary School and also Central Junior High. Their main motive for the Central fire was a desire not to go to school the next day. They figured a small fire would give them an extra day or two off of school. Arlene was with them as they broke into Central through a cafeteria window. They initially tried to flood the school using showers in the boys’ locker room, but not enough water came out to do so. Pat and Gay then suggested starting a fire and Arlene quickly became scared and left before the fires were started. After Arlene left, Pat set fire to items in two classrooms while Gay set fire to things in one of the classrooms. After setting the fires, the girls returned to Gay’s home where Arlene waited for them to listen to records. Once the sound of fire trucks was heard, they joined the crowd to watch the fire.
No reason for setting the fire at Lincoln was mentioned in the newspaper reports, but being so close to a holiday weekend, one wonders if they were once again looking for an extended holiday by causing fire damage. The three-story school was opened in 1893 and would have had many of the same building features as the 1902 Central Junior High.
Pat and Gay were found guilty of delinquency on temporary orders and were to be held at the Illinois State Training School for Girls in Geneva, Illinois pending their charges and were to receive psychological testing there. Arlene was committed to the Bethany home in Rock Island on a temporary delinquency count.
All three girls were released in a few months to their parents on probation until 1952. Arlene’s family relocated soon after to Salt Lake City, Utah. Arlene would marry four times. Her final years were spent in Indiana with her fourth husband Leonard Huking. Arlene passed away on May 14, 2000 in Indiana.
Gay’s family moved to Galesburg, Illinois. After the training school, Gay was placed into a church home in Joliet, Illinois until 1951. Once released, she joined her family and went on to graduate from Galesburg High School. She married and divorced three times before her death in 1964 at the age of 28 under mysterious circumstances in Tijuana, Mexico. She left behind three children when she passed.
Pat’s family moved just outside Rock Island to Port Byron, Illinois. After the move, Pat can be found under her step-father’s last name of Heberle. In October 1953, Pat was nominated and crowned Homecoming Queen at Port Byron High School. She later graduated from that school. Pat was married twice before passing away in 2011.
The new Central Junior High School opened in 1954. In the 1980s, Central closed and the building was adapted to be used as an elementary school. It was renamed Lincoln Elementary School after the original Lincoln School which had been closed in 1980 and torn down in 2012. It later became Rock Island Intermediate School in the early 2000s. The school closed in 2010 and the building was again repurposed to be part of the central food production kitchen for the district. That closed in 2021 and the building was torn down in 2023.
Today, on the site of the old Lincoln Elementary School is the new district building with administration offices and a distribution kitchen. The Central Junior High School site remains empty.
The block with the old Lincoln Elementary School and the Central Junior High School has a long history with Rock Island School District, now called Rock Island-Milan School District #41. In 1856, five separate school districts merged into the Rock Island School District and work began on a new high school at 7th Avenue and 22nd Street. The building was completed in the summer of 1858 and furniture was being moved in preparation for fall term. During 4th of July fireworks celebrations, crowds noticed the new high school was on fire. Sadly, the building burnt down before it even opened to students.
The school district quickly began work on building a second high school on the same site. The second building was ready by 1859 and was eventually torn down in 1892 to make way for P. S. 4 which became Lincoln Elementary School (which was featured in this blog). In 1887, a new (third) high school was built on the same block next to the old high school. It opened in 1888, was enlarged in 1898, and burnt down under mysterious circumstances on February 15, 1901. Work soon began on the fourth high school which was built on the same spot as the third high school and opened in 1902. It too would be destroyed by fire on December 11, 1949 as Central Junior High School.
Our attention was caught with the Central Junior High School fire occurring so closely to the tragic St. Elizabeth’s fire. Both were public structures serving their respective communities with similar building design materials that would later be fire hazards.
We would like to share links to our St. Elizabeth’s blogs Part I and Part II along with our blog on St. Elizabeth’s Nurse Anna Neal as we approach its 75th anniversary.
(posted by Amy D.)
