Adam’s Ark a favorite gathering place in late 1800s
This sketch was part of a series on early pioneers that appeared in the Bloomington Bulletin newspaper
in 1897. The artist of this and more than 20 additional sketches in the series was Owen T. “Jack” Reeves.
(Photo courtesy of the McLean County Museum of History)
In the final two decades of the 19th century, there was no better place in Bloomington to grumble
about the latest foibles of corrupt and inept public officials, recount a well-worn story of pioneer
hardihood, or simply doze away the afternoon, than at Adam’s Ark, the legendary cigar store on
the northeast corner of the Courthouse Square.
“The Ark,” as it was known, was once described as a place where “anecdote and repartee poured
out like Old Crow from a stone jug at an old-fashioned barn raising.”
It was an all-male mecca for politicians, aging pioneers, stockmen, Courthouse employees and
the usual coterie of loafers and eccentrics with a gift for gab who liked to gather around the
cuspidor and “tobacco-bespattered stove” to solve the unsolvable problems of the world. “It was
there that the great affairs of state were settled,” recalled the Pantagraph in 1924, “presidents
made and unmade, governors nominated and thrown out of office, congressmen and senators
selected and cast aside and all of the county, township and municipal affairs adjusted.”
The old-timers reminisced about the earliest years of settlement, telling and retelling tall (and
not-so-tall) tales of Native Americans, wolves, prairie fires and meteorological calamities such as
the “Deep Snow” of 1830-1831 and the “Sudden Freeze” of 1836. At this cigar store, someone
quipped, the Deep Snow “got deeper every year.”
The Adam in Adam’s Ark was Adam Guthrie. Born in 1825 in Ohio, Guthrie was an infant when
his family settled in McLean County, first in the Funk’s Grove area and then north of Towanda.
The family moved to Bloomington in either 1831 or 1832 (accounts differ) and it was here that
Guthrie resided the remainder of his long life.
He first worked as a plasterer before embarking in the retail cigar and tobacco trade. Around
1880, Guthrie began running a cigar shop on the first floor of a two-story building on the corner
of Main and Jefferson streets (today the site of the old Corn Belt Bank building). The ramshackle
affair, complete with a wooden Indian out front, was the last wood-frame building on the
Courthouse Square when it was lost in the Great Fire of June 19, 1900.
The Ark became a favorite gathering place for early settlers, such as former Bloomington mayor
Benjamin F. Funk; John Dawson (the first Euro-American settler born in McLean County);
Abram Brokaw (the “Bro” in BroMenn); and “Private” Joseph W. Fifer, a former governor.
“When arguments grew too acrimonious,” read one of many reminiscences of The Ark, “old
Adam started scrubbing the floor and made the disputants scatter.”
From time to time on slow news days, a Pantagraph scribe would stroll over to Guthrie’s shop in
search of a good story to fill a few columns of newsprint. “Yesterday was a dull day about town
and there was a quorum at Adam’s Ark,” noted an anonymous reporter in early January 1894.
“Adam dozed peacefully in the corner behind the stove, occasionally waking from his nap long
enough to object to some reckless statement of fact.”
That day “Uncle” Ike Lash told a story of two men walking through some timber near Tremont
when once aimed and fired a rifle at a sapsucker in a nearby tree. “There was a sort o’ whizzin’
and snappin’ in the timber for a second or two, and blamed if that feller that was standin’ beside
the man that fired the gun didn’t fall dead in his tracks, with a rifle ball in the back of his head,”
Lash relayed. “That consarned rifle ball had jest glanced from the sugar saplin’ to another, and
then to another until it made a clean circle.” How, exactly, did Uncle Ike know this story to be
true? Well, he said, he knew someone who just so happened to be the brother-in-law of someone
who just so happened to witness the accident from afar.
After the 1900 fire, Guthrie relocated his business to the Main Street side of the Evans Building,
immediately north of his old location. He passed away in September 1904 at the age of 79, and
not long after the Ark closed its doors for good.
In 1894, newsman and diarist Edward Wilson penned an appreciation of Adam’s Ark and its role
in the local cultural landscape. In this poem, Wilson writes from the perspective of a local farmer
who “don’t care a cent to go visitin’” Bloomington “exceptin,’” that is, Adam’s Ark.
… on long rainy days, ‘er in winter,
When the cronies ‘er there, I’ll remark,
That no matter how hard blows the blizzard,
It’s all homelike at Adam’s Ark.
Bloomington's 'Great Fire' of 1900 quickly swept through 45 buildings
This image shows the aftermath of the fire that destroyed much of downtown Bloomington.
It was the most destructive eight hours in Bloomington history. Just after midnight on June 19,
1900, a great fire began sweeping through much of the city’s downtown. By 8:00 a.m. the next
morning, stunned residents struggled with the enormity of the devastation—45 buildings and
four-and-a-half blocks reduced to little more than smoking rubble.
It all began at 12:20 a.m., when Bloomington patrolman John Brennan spotted flames in a
second-story widow of Model Laundry, located on the south side of the 100 block of E. Monroe
St. between Main and East streets.
Flames quickly spread to Benoni S. Green’s harness and saddlery business immediately to the
east. From the beginning, antiquated equipment combined with low water pressure hampered
Bloomington firefighters. “The city water pressure was very poor, and the only source was from
six-inch water mains,” recalled Green’s son Ralph in 1948. “I well remember the four or five
hose lines from which was flowing very scant and weak streams of water.”
The 16-year-old Green watched his father’s business burn, story by story, from the relative safety
of Second Presbyterian Church across East St. “On the fourth floor we had stocks of horse
collars hung on racks,” he remembered, “and in my mind’s eye I can still see those leather
collars burning.”
Steady winds pushed the fire in a southwesterly direction, and within an hour flames had
engulfed most of the block running from Main to East and Monroe to Jefferson streets.
The fire spread to the east and north sides of the Courthouse Square. Even the largest, most
substantial brick structures, such as the five-story Griesheim Building, proved no match for the
flames and blast furnace-like heat. This high rise, located at the southeast corner of Main and
Jefferson, was home to not only Wolf Griesheim’s street-level men’s clothing store, but also
more than 30 doctor, dentist, and law offices.
At 2:30 a.m., Bloomington Mayor Lewis B. Thomas requested assistance from the Peoria and
Springfield fire departments. Both arrived around 5:00 a.m., coming by express train with their
equipment lashed to railcars.
“Perhaps the most thrilling sight of the entire fire was when Peoria’s fire department arrived on
the scene,” recalled Claude McLean on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the fire. “I’ll
never forget seeing those three big gray horses pounding up Center Street pulling the Peoria
department’s steamer. There was a four-foot blaze coming from the boiler stack and the horses
were running like the wind.” Chester Williams, another eyewitness, said Peoria firemen tore
down billboards and used them as fire shields. As soon as a billboard would burst into flames
from the intense heat, they would find another one and head straight back into the inferno.
Burning embers and sparks filled the air. Sparrow nests on the roof of the Courthouse caught
fire, and the flames spread to the wooden rafters. Thus the supposedly fireproof building burned
from within. By morning, according to one account, the Courthouse resembled “a skull, sightless
and cavernous.”
On the north side of the Square, the fire jumped across Center St., bringing down the Windsor
Hotel (today the site of the Illinois House) and an old Baptist church, then serving as a livery
stable (today the location of Pantagraph Printing & Stationery Co.). Chester Williams
remembered men running out of the Windsor with bottles of whiskey. “They had bottles jammed
in all their pockets and three or four in each hand, with the necks laced between their fingers,” he
said.
Thankfully, the flames spread no further, due in part to the efforts of local residents manning
rooftop “bucket brigades.” The last blaze was extinguished a little before 8:00 a.m. Later on,
paper and letters were found in farm fields three to four miles southwest of downtown, carried by
the maelstrom’s updraft and the strong winds.
In the aftermath of the fire, Corn Belt Bank could not open its big vault, so a professional (but
law-abiding) safecracker was brought down from Chicago. He constructed a battering ram-like
apparatus suspended from a chain, and this “ponderous piece of wood” was swung repeatedly
against the steel door, eventually forcing it open. “Several thousands of dollars had passed
through the fire all right and not a paper was crumpled,” reported The Bloomington Daily
Bulletin newspaper.
Estimates placed the losses at more than $2 million (or more than $50 million today, adjusted for
inflation). In Chicago, LaSalle St. insurance companies lost an estimated $750,000, according to
newspaper accounts. They would have lost much more, though, if not for the false sense of
security within the Bloomington business community. “No fires had taken place in Bloomington
for so long that the residents had come to the conclusion that the city was flame proof,” noted
The Chicago Chronicle. Most downtown businesses, for instance, had carried no more than 40 to
50 percent coverage on their buildings.
The new Griesheim Building opened on December 11, 1900, a mere 175 days after what became
known as the “Great Fire.” Other businesses would follow, including long-standing landmarks
such as the Corn Belt Bank building and the Illinois House. The new Courthouse, today home to
the McLean County Museum of History, opened in 1903.
To mark the first anniversary of the fire, Griesheim’s clothing store held a “phoenix sale.” One
of their advertisements featured a winged phoenix arising from the ashes of the Great Fire. The
message was simple—downtown Bloomington was back.