The birth of the FDNY: How America’s worst urban riot gave rise to New York City’s Bravest
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Sunday, April 26, 2015, 12:00 AM
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A picture of heroic FDNY from the 1880s.
New York City burst in flames on the morning of July 13, 1863 — a conflagration of rage and resentment that exploded next to a draft office in Midtown.
A lottery to force able-bodied men into the military was underway, boiling over into a tense standoff between police and protesters, who opposed the draft into the unpopular Civil War.
New York was a town divided, with many abolitionists supporting Abraham Lincoln, while his critics railed against what they called his “n----- war” — a battle over slavery.
The draft would have been cause for protest in any condition, but the terms of this lottery were especially irksome. All able-bodied men of fighting age were eligible — but those rich enough to pay $300 could buy their way out, or bribe someone to take their place.
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An illustration of an early fire in New York City.
Moreover, the city’s vocal corps of volunteer firemen — traditionally exempt from military service as a tribute to their community service — were now fair game.
In fact, several city firemen were among those whose names had been called in the first round of the draft on Friday, July 11.
When military officials convened again two days later, on Monday, July 13, at the provost marshals’ office on Third Ave. and 46th St., they were met by an angry but controlled mob. The aggravated throng waved “No Draft” signs and heckled pedestrians.
COURTESY FDNYA fireman poses with a dog following a heroic canine rescue.
CUNNINGHAM, TOMFiremen battle blaze in the Bronx in 1974.
All that was needed was a spark to the tinder, and it came from a quarter nobody expected: New York City’s volunteer firefighters.
A horde of red-shirted smoke eaters from the Black Joke fire company jumped into the seething swarm, shouting and pushing and hurling rocks.
Several of their members, including Black Joke captain Peter Masterson, had been among those conscripted in Friday’s draft — and they were there to make sure it didn’t happen again.
Their frustration was fuel on a flame to the pack nearby.
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Firefighter helmets from the collection at the NYC Fire Museum. Black leather helmet used by Lt. William Gibbons of Engine 269. White background on frontpiece indicates rank, black inset with numbers indicates engine company.
Within minutes, the protesters smashed into the provost’s office. A blaze, rumored to be the work of Black Joke firefighters, flared from the building next door, spreading with incredible velocity.
The actions of the mob devolved with equal speed. The yelling and shoving morphed into violent looting and random attacks on passersby.
Alarm bells rang around the city as the rich shuttered their doors, police ran frantically into the streets and volunteer firefighters — unaware some of their own were implicated in the furor — whipped their horses into action.
They found themselves battling rabid rioters who pelted them with rocks and killed the firehouse horses in an effort to increase the mayhem and let Manhattan burn.
By mid-afternoon, the mob gathered in front of a vulnerable target: the Orphan Asylum for Colored Children on Fifth Ave. in Midtown.
Thieves ransacked it as men from Engine Co. 18 labored to evacuate 200 black children out the back door to safety.
Inside, Fire Chief John Decker and his firefighters fought off the rioters, doing everything in their power to block the mob’s attempts to set the orphanage ablaze.
Over the next five days, New York City’s infamous Draft Riots raged.
Carnage, pillaging, burning and lynching rained down on the city — and black residents in particular — until it finally burned itself out on Friday, July 17.
Out of the ashes of America’s worst urban riot, the world’s greatest professional fire department was born.
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History has held the Black Joke volunteer fire company in low esteem for its role in the 1863 Draft Riots.
But in truth, its feisty, rebellious way of dealing with heavy-handed authority was one of the trademarks of New York City’s colorful bands of volunteer firefighters.
WALLY, S.O.Fire Department physical fitness test in 1946.
Fireboard John Purroy Mitchell takes position in first line of the city's fire defense in 1921.
Ever since the first big ships sailed into the pristine waters of New York’s harbor in the early 1600s, settlers relied on civic duty to protect their rustic wooden homes.
The uncontrolled destruction of fires continued to terrorize the flammable city even two centuries later — as it transformed into a teeming metropolis that overran most of Manhattan.
Nothing could devastate the burgeoning wealth of Manhattan’s influential mercantile class like a burning blaze — and city elders were rightfully concerned.
In the decades leading up to the Draft Riots, attempts were made to organize the volunteer firefighters who were hometown heroes — devilish and beloved at once.
Often clad in bright red shirts, with caps on their heads and suspenders over their backs, the vollies — artisans, carpenters, gunsmiths and laborers by day — lived and died to serve in their local firehouses.
They raced to fires on horse-drawn carriages, used leather hoses to douse flames and pumped water into their old-fashioned tankers with boundless energy.
The crew of 1,400 firemen also had an inter-departmental rivalry that turned fire calls into foot races — with each firehouse vying to be the first to get water pumping at a scene.
TWYMAN, VICTORFiremen in training during 1946 exercise in Manhattan.
FRANK HURLEY/FRANK HURLEYProbationary firemen leap from the equivalant of three stories in 1954.
When tempers flared, fists went flying, as local historian Augustine Costello wrote one day after witnessing Engine Co. 15, from Mulberry St., tangle with Lady Washington’s Co. 40, a volunteer unit from what is now Chinatown.
“The shock of battle rolled down the line ... one thousand sturdy, stalwart fellows were fiercely grappling with each other in a hand-to-hand fight. The din was frightful,” Costello wrote.
“The fighters were so thick that there was scarcely any room to fall.”
Among those in the fray was Moses Humphreys, of Engine Co. 40, a newspaper printer for the New York Sun who doubled as a volunteer firefighter. He’s believed to be the real-life inspiration for Big Mose, a beloved figure of urban folklore who was “8-feet tall with Virginia ham-sized fists” and worked with a beer keg strapped to his leg.
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The famous Wesbter Hall fire of 1931.
Like Humphreys, Big Mose was a member of legendary Five Points gang, the Bowery Boys. The Dead Rabbits and Pug Uglies and other gangs infested the city’s volunteer firehouses, infusing their firefighting rivalries with an extra layer of hatred.
There was another larger-than-life character who ran with the gangs and fought fires as a volunteer — and unlike Big Mose, his existence was never in doubt.
William Tweed, better known as Boss Tweed, the man who built a corrupt political empire through the Tammany Hall patronage machine, got his start as a lowly volunteer for Americus Fire Company No. 6, aka “Big Six.”
RUPPMANN, CHARLESA massive fire wallops the Bronx on the doorstep of the 1977 World Series.
BAFFER, TOMLone fireman James Regan heroically climbs to top of ladder in 1957 fire.
By 1863, Boss Tweed had left behind his days as an ax-wielding volunteer firefighter. He was the Tammany puppet master with ties into various city agencies — all of which he mercilessly plundered to the tune of some $200 million.
The mayhem caused by the 1863 Draft Riots meant stepped-up pressure on state and city officials to clean up the messy ways of undisciplined volunteer firehouses.
The powerful insurance industry, which took a financial hit anytime it had to pay out on fire claims, raised the largest cry.
In 1865, elected officials in the state Legislature put an end to the freewheeling fun of volunteer firefighting with a stroke of a pen.
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A firefighter takes a breather in the Bronx.
Gone were the bright red shirts, the firehouses as community hangouts, the rivalries that energized the men. In their place came paid professionals, wearing dark blue flannel and following strict firehouse rules.
For the first time, New York City had a corps of paid, professional firefighters — the foundation of the modern-day FDNY.
On Aug. 1, 1865, the Metropolitan Fire Department invaded the city’s firehouses and kicked out the volunteers. It had a budget to hire 600 men and purchase $564,000 in equipment — and crafty Boss Tweed couldn’t wait to get his hands on it.
All he needed was the right puppet in Albany.
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Tin speaking trumpet belonging to foreman of Engine Company No. 7.
It took three years, but he got his man. Tammany loyalist John T. Hoffman was elected New York’s governor in 1868, and almost immediately set about ramming through the Tweed Charter.
It stripped the state of control of the fire department, and turned it — and its fat budget — over to the city.
It was goodbye to the Metropolitan Fire Department, and hello to the Fire Department of the City of New York — otherwise known as the FDNY.
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FDNY uniform button, stamped with maker’s mark on reverse.
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In the immediate aftermath of the Tweed Charter, little changed in the firefighters’ close-knit world.
They ate and breathed the job — which required them to work in 151-hour stretches with three breaks a day to go home for hour-long visits.
The smoke eaters earned roughly $700 a year, but time and time again put their lives on the line for the city’s indebted residents, many of whom lived in crowded, cramped tenements that were veritable death traps.
But by the time World War II rolled onto America’s shores in 1942, the FDNY was a force to be reckoned with.
Boss Tweed was long gone. He died in a Ludlow St. jail not long after the FDNY was formed, a victim of his own greed and corruption.
Also gone were the FDNY’s horses and endless “continuous duty” shifts. In their place were fast-moving fire engines and ladder rigs and regular days.
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Leather helmet frontpiece belonging to William Tweed, who would later become ”boss” of political machine.
The FDNY had nearly 11,000 men in firehouses in all five boroughs. Its members had unionized in every rank, and they enjoyed generous salaries, pensions and benefits.
Their technology had upgraded too. Thicker, stronger helmets protected their heads. A long, bulky rubberized jacket helped stave off burns. Air tanks made it possible for smoke eaters to survive even the heaviest conditions.
The firefighting force itself changed, as well.
More and more firefighters moved out of the neighborhood enclaves they’d grown up in. They headed to the surrounding upstate counties and Long Island, as highways connected new neighborhoods to the city.
DAILY NEWSLast hand-drawn fire engine team in Brooklyn races to its last call in 1922.
Fire department graduation exercises in 1967.
By the early 1920s, the FDNY was no longer the almost-exclusive provenance of white males — although it would take nearly the entire century for African-Americans to get on the job in significant numbers.
By the early 1980s, women were also banging down the door to confront the significant challenge of integrating all-male firehouses. Three decades later, the FDNY still only has 43 women firefighters — two more than the 41 who originally joined in 1982.
But even as the FDNY transitioned into the 21st century, many of the basic elements of the job remained the same.
LEVINES, OSSIEFiremen taking physical fitness test in 1948.
It’s a career spent exploring filthy basements and hallways on hands and knees in pitch black smoke, slogging up seemingly endless flights of stairs in an increasingly vertical city, responding to crashes, collapses and every kind of disaster — and always with the knowledge that the job could take a firefighters’ life.
Since its creation in 1865, the FDNY has responded to every major calamity in the city and even in its surrounding waterways, from the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in 1911 that killed 146 to the horror of 9/11, which killed 343 members of the department.
NEW YORK CITY FIRE MUSEUMTractor-drawn 1912 American-LaFrance Metropolitan second size steam pumper assigned to FDNY Engine Company No. 93.
FDNY officials said the department’s death toll for its 150-year history stands at 1,143.
Every October, firefighters gather at a memorial to remember the long list of Bravest who have made the ultimate sacrifice. The memorial, created in 1910 with heavy contributions from among the city’s poorest, was inscribed with a message as true today as it was then:
“To the men of the Fire Department of the City of New York who died at the call of duty, soldiers in a war that never ends.
“This memorial is dedicated by the people of a grateful city.”
NEW YORK CITY FIRE MUSEUM
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