How Old Towne Petersburg Recovered from its Horrid Fire
The year was 1815. The season: summertime. The temperature outside: a scorching 102 degrees. It may have already felt like a fire was brewing outside right before the real one started. And when the real one started, it destroyed nearly half the town. Part of the reason for that was that most of the buildings and lofts Petersburg va were made out of wood. Keep in mind this was 1815, and towns needed to be built on the cheap with whatever materials were currently available. The town was basically a collection of wooden warehouses and homes along the Appomattox River, so any sort of fire, no matter how small, was going to do more damage than it probably should have. But from the ashes of the fire grew a brick commercial district that eventually became a crossroads for trading ships on the river and batteaux on the canals.
What’s amazing about this story is not the fire itself but the ability of the city to rebuild itself and rebuild itself fairly quickly. That’s a testament to the great spirit of the town’s workers, and their contributions will echo through time from generation to generation.
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