Mapping Georgetown: An Eyewitness to the Georgetown Library Fire
By • November 8, 2021 0 1465
On her story-map, Robyn Hickey gives an eyewitness account of the library fire. Courtesy Mapping Georgetown.
When your local history collection is nearly destroyed by fire, you realize how precious are the treasures and stories of your collective past.
At noon on Monday, April 30, 2007, Georgetown had a fire the likes of which most don’t ever witness in a lifetime.
Two hundred firefighters and more than 20 fire trucks shut down Wisconsin Avenue to battle the surging blaze at 3260 R St. NW, the site of Georgetown’s public library. The rescuers were fighting for the remains of the library’s beloved Peabody Room which holds Georgetown’s historical collections. The Peabody Room Collection, meticulously managed by Jerry McCoy, houses books, photographs, maps, manuscripts, newspapers, artwork and artifacts documenting Georgetown’s two-and-a-half centuries of history, dating back to the original planting and settlement of Washington’s oldest neighborhood.
Recollections of the Georgetown Public Library fire are the stuff of legend, but we don’t always have eyewitness accounts of the terrible events of the day.
Do we realize the scale of the conflagration, the magnitude of the rescue, or the potential losses to our collective memories? Can we even imagine the experience of actually being there that day?
In light of this, we were delighted to receive this eyewitness account from Robyn Hickey who submitted it through the Peobody Room’s outreach efforts for our Mapping Georgetown project:
At the corner of R and Wisconsin, NW, (I) watched the original flames come from the roof the day of the Georgetown DCPL (Georgetown DC Public Library) fire. A small crowd had gathered and I joined them as we anxiously awaited the arrival of the fire trucks so the flames could be abated. When they arrived, we anxiously awaited the hook-ups of the fire hoses to the nearby hydrants. It seemed to take forever to get water into the raging flames. When it shifted to smoke (thank heavens!) we were able to breathe a quasi sigh of relief, but were still in shock at what was occurring. Local officials arrived speedily and spoke to the media assuring all ‘everything was under control.”
– Robyn Hickey
How did the Peabody Room of the DCPL get its name?
The Peabody Room was named in honor of George Peabody (1795 – 1869) who was an American financier and philanthropist, “highly regarded as the father of modern philanthropy.” He was born to a poor family in Massachusetts as one of seven children.
In 1811, When Peabody’s brother’s Newburyport, Mass., dry goods store burned down, Peabody went to Georgetown in Washington, D.C., to work in a wholesale dry-goods warehouse. He went on to become an international presence as a world renown financier. Peabody partnered with Junius Spencer Morgan (father of J.P. Morgan) in 1854 to form Peobody, Morgan & Co.
As a disciple of Benjamin Franklin, Peabody “combined hard work with frugality, punctuality, and a strong public spirit,” according to Wikipedia. He was a “pioneer, whose success in philanthropy set a new standard for American millionaires.” In 1867–68, he established the Peabody Education Fund with $3.5 million to “encourage the intellectual, moral, and industrial education of the destitute children of the Southern States.” Peabody was especially imaginative, and relied on his own memories of poverty and self-education to introduce new ways to educate and culturally enrich the next generation of poor youth, and thereby promote greater equality in American society.
In 1867, Peabody established a fund for the purpose of building a library in Georgetown. He expressed his wish to donate a gift to residents in a declaration to his selected Board of Trustees:
“Gentlemen: As most of you are aware, I am, and have been for some time, desirous of making some gift which would be productive of some benefit to the Citizens of Georgetown, in the District of Columbia, where I commenced business for myself in my early youth. I am persuaded that I can not better do so than by endeavoring to assist them in their own endeavors to cultivate a healthful, moral, and intellectual progress; and therefore give, gentlemen, the sum of fifteen thousand dollars to be, by you and your successors, held in trust as a fund for a public library, to be established in the city of Georgetown.” (dclibrary.org)
In 1867, as a member of the Democratic Party, Peabody was considered as a possible Secretary of the Treasury in the cabinet of President Andrew Johnson. He was also considered to be a candidate for president of the U.S., a suggestion to which he was not receptive due to his age.
In his final years, Peabody won worldwide acclaim for his philanthropy, founding the Peabody Trust in Britain and the Peabody Institute and George Peabody Library in Baltimore, as well as several other notable institutions. For his public generosity, Peabody was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal.
Peabody’s death and the pair of funerals were international news, due to “the newly completed trans-Atlantic underwater telegraph cable.” Hundreds “participated in the ceremonies and thousands more attended or observed.”
The Peabody Library was not established, however, until after Peabody’s death. The Board of Trustees of the Peabody Library Association, headed by W.W. Corcoran, invested the money donated by Peabody.
According the dclibrary.org: “The Peabody Room serves as the city’s only special collection of Georgetown history. The collection of the Peabody Library was transferred to the public branch when it opened in its own building in 1935. Items relating to Georgetown history became the basis for the Peabody Room, while other books were transferred either to the branch or to the main library collection. A separate room, the Peabody Room, was established to house the former library’s collection of Georgetowniana, including books, maps, photographs, documents, letters, scrapbooks and clippings relating to the people and places of Georgetown.”
George Peabody (1795-1869), “father of modern American philanthropy” and local library namesake. Courtesy Georgetown Peabody Library.
These Mapping Georgetown stories can be viewed in full at https://mappinggeorgetown.com/2019/06/13/old-lady-leary-lit-a-lantern-in-the-shed/
We invite you to add your story to our Mapping Georgetown collection. Blank templates can be printed from the home page of www.mappinggeorgetown.com or picked up from The Georgetown Public Library.
To learn more about the Mapping Georgetown project see https://georgetowner.com/articles/2021/07/19/marilyn-butlers-vision-for-mapping-georgetown/. Marilyn Butler can be reached at marilyn.butler@gmail.com
