Destruction of a film-storage vault
On the morning of June 13, 1914, a disastrous fire and a series of related explosions occurred in the main film vault of the Lubin Manufacturing Company in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Several possible causes for the blaze were cited at the time, one being "spontaneous combustion" of highly flammable nitrate film, which was the motion picture industry's standard medium for cameras throughout the silent era and for the first two decades of "talking pictures". Millions of feet of film were consumed in the flames, including most of the master negatives and initial prints of Lubin's pre-1914 catalog, several of the company's recently completed theatrical prints ready for release and distribution, a considerable number of films produced by other studios, inventories of raw and stock footage, hundreds of reels documenting historic events that occurred between 1897 and early 1914, as well as other films related to notable political and military figures, innovations in medical science, and professional athletic contests from that period. While this fire was not a decisive factor in Lubin's decline and bankruptcy by September 1916, costs associated with the disaster only added to the corporation's mounting debts, which led to the closure or sale of its remaining operations the following year.
"Lubinville" in Philadelphia.
In 1902, after five years of filming assorted rudimentary motion pictures, pioneer studio mogul Siegmund Lubin officially formed the Lubin Manufacturing Company in Philadelphia. Several buildings in the city served as the company's early downtown headquarters and production facilities, but the rapid growth of Lubin's business demanded much larger accommodations, so in 1910 he constructed a state-of-the-art studio and film-processing plant in North Philadelphia at the intersection of 20th Street and Indiana Avenue. Dubbed "Lubinville" by the press, the complex of buildings there was at the time among the most elaborate and technically advanced motion picture facilities in the world, with labs capable of processing up to of film per week.
The Lubin "film factory" included a studio with an area of . The studio had a slanted glass roof and glass walls supported by light steel framing. It also had costume rooms, property rooms, areas for set construction and equipment repair, a cafeteria, spaces for every phase of film processing, a large garage for servicing the plant's fleet of trucks and Lozier touring cars, and a five-story building that housed administrative offices, shops on its top floor for the manufacture of projectors, and the plant's shipping department in its basement. Also at Lubinville was the most up-to-date vault for storing and organizing the company's growing catalog of master negatives and prints for its theatrical releases, its historical films, and all other footage under its care.
In addition to generating revenue from its own motion pictures, Lubinville earned substantial income by processing and assembling theatrical print copies for other studios, which explains why some master negatives and test prints for productions made by other companies were also stored in Lubinville's film vault. Various studios sent their negatives to Lubin for printing, for the Philadelphia firm was highly regarded in the motion picture industry for the superior clarity of its footage, a reputation represented by the company's logo, the image of the Liberty Bell accompanied by the motto "Clear As A Bell". In one of its 1914 issues, the trade paper "Billboard" explained how Lubinville received, processed, edited to specifications, and stored films for its studio customers:
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The film vault.
Lubinville's film vault was located at the "extreme southeastern corner of the plant", and for safety reasons it was positioned outside employee work areas and situated on the perimeter of the complex. The vault's lengthy front side, however, did not face empty lots; it faced North Garnet Street, a narrow residential street lined on the other side with two-story brick row houses. Every precaution was taken to minimize the possibility of fire in and around the vault since the dangers of using and storing volatile thermoplastic film stocks were very well known in 1914 and were subjects of ongoing concern in the motion picture industry. The standard film type used by studios at the time was composed of celluloid, which photographic companies manufactured by treating nitrocellulose with camphor as a plasticizer. The combination produced a flexible and effective film strip for cameras, but it was also a highly sensitive material that could be easily ignited and burned intensely. Celluloid film, also referred to as nitrate film owing to its nitrocellulose base, only became more unstable and more hazardous as it aged. Off-gassing and heat were byproducts of the material as it continued to degrade over time, especially in storage conditions with excessive humidity and elevated temperatures. Film cans or reels containing deteriorating nitrate stock had the capability of "autoigniting" or spontaneously combusting. Once burning, the film was extremely difficult to extinguish since celluloid contains sufficient oxygen within its molecular structure to continue burning even when fully immersed in water.
With concerns regarding the instability of nitrate film and the inherent dangers of storing it, many safety features were incorporated into the design and construction of Lubinville's one-story "fireproof" vault, which according to news accounts occupied a total area of with perimeter walls of red brick thick. The whole vault, running in length, was divided into five adjoining but "entirely separate" compartments or units, each measuring and separated from one another by interior walls, also brick, thick. This chambered configuration was intended to minimize losses and contain a blaze if one unit ever caught fire, reducing the likelihood of its migration to the other four. All of the units shared a reinforced concrete roof and concrete flooring that were thick, with access to each unit through individual sealed "bank-like" doors outfitted with burglar-proof locks. No lighting fixtures or devices with electrical "wiring of any sort" were installed inside the units. Daytime illumination of each interior relied solely on a pair of narrow "deadlights" or sealed skylights positioned on the structure's roof and fitted with glass thick. In late afternoons or on overcast days when more light was needed, assigned "runners" or any other Lubin employee who entered the vault to retrieve, return, or to organize films, that person was required to use only a special battery-powered "hand flashlight". Air exchange inside each unit relied on a passive ventilation system consisting of four "grated windows near the roof" and two vents at the base of the unit's back wall on the factory side of the vault. To prevent the spread of fires and to protect further both the vault and employee work spaces inside the plant, a "heavy double fireproof wall" of brick and reinforced concrete was incorporated into the factory's perimeter wall that was set back from the vault and ran the entire length of the five units.
Fire-safety standards at the plant.
Unlike New York City's infamous 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, when 146 employees died in a cluttered working environment with poor safety standards, Lubinville's facilities in uptown Philadelphia were for their time models of fire prevention, evacuation procedures, and fire-suppression capability. Lubin, like other motion picture studios and film-processing plants in that period, stored large quantities of exposed and raw nitrate stock, a material that seemed "determined to destroy itself", very often in flames by its "own volition". Reels and cans containing nitrate footage therefore posed a constant fire threat, with blazes at storage sites regularly reported in newspapers and trade publications in which film stock was blamed either as the cause or as a powerful accelerant in spreading any flame.
Prior to the fire at Lubinville, employees there were described as working "secure in the knowledge that there was no place in the plant where a fire extinguisher or fire hose was not plainly visible and functional". All exits throughout the complex were marked and kept unobstructed in accordance with not only Philadelphia fire regulations but also at the insistence of Siegmund Lubin himself. Fire drills were regularly held, and work areas were "maintained in a scrupulous state of Teutonic tidiness". Fire-safety rules were also rigorously followed and were described by employees to be "as strict as those of a battleship".
Despite Lubin's attention to safety procedures, fire remained an ongoing concern at the plant and throughout the film industry in the summer of 1914, a concern heightened by three very destructive fires that occurred at other companies earlier in the year. On March 19, flames swept through the plant of the Eclair Moving Picture Company in Fort Lee, New Jersey, causing $750,000 in damages ($ today). Several buildings there and films in that studio's "fireproof" vault burned. News reports stated that the facility was "adequately equipped with hose lines", but employees were unable to battle the fire because there was no water pressure. Just nine days later, Edison's studio in New York City, in the Bronx, was very heavily damaged by fire. Then, on May 13, 1914, exactly a month before the Lubinville disaster, yet another fire destroyed a large collection of films at Universal Pictures and "gutted" much of that company's six-story Colonial Hall facility at 102 West 101st Street in Manhattan. However, none of those earlier 1914 events was traced directly to spontaneous combustion or to some other film-related cause. At Eclair the fire originated near a production being staged inside the studio; at Edison a short circuit inside a lighting switchboard was blamed; and "defective insulation" was cited as the source of Universal's costly accident. Still, when the fires reached and ignited large quantities of film stored at all three locations, the blazes immediately intensified and spread rapidly, adding greatly to the firefighters' tasks of extinguishing the flames and increasing substantially the damage and repair costs at the sites. Unfortunately for Edison, the company suffered a much worse fire at its headquarters in West Orange, New Jersey, later in 1914, on December 9. The origin of that catastrophic $7,000,000 loss for Edison ($ today) was attributed to "an exploding film" inside a building where nitrate footage was stored and inspected. That structure and several other larger buildings were completely destroyed, as were "all the Edison photoplays" kept at that site, along with "cameras and m. p. [motion picture] apparatus of immense value".
June 13 fire and explosions.
On Saturday morning, June 13, 1914, during an extended summer heat wave in Philadelphia, "several hundred" employees were working at Lubinville. Suddenly, "shortly after" 10 a.m., they heard and felt a "terrific" explosion on the far east side of the complex. An undetected fire burning in one of the film vault's five units ignited celluloid gases that had built up inside the brick-and-concrete container. The resulting explosion had "ripped out the street side" of the structure and "shattered its roof", spreading the fire to other units, quickly setting alight millions of feet of highly flammable film stock and detonating three more violent explosions. "Flames shooting into the air over a hundred feet" and columns of thick dark smoke dominated the northern skyline of the city as the blasts hurled hundreds of metal film reels and cans with "blazing celluloid" in all directions, many high above the plant. Seconds later, the "flying" reels, can lids, and fragments of footage began raining down, setting off more fires both on and off the Lubin property as the odors of sulfur dioxide and other toxic gases from the burning film filled the area.
With the collapse of the vault's walls from the explosions, fire spread to the plant's printing rooms and shops, and then to part of the site's highest structure, its five-story main building. Burning debris continued to fall from the sky, igniting additional small fires throughout the central compound. Several row houses on the other side of North Garnet Street were roasted by the fiery blasts, as were cars parked along the narrow street. Then other houses began to smolder and ignite. Gathering at safe distances around the film factory, groups of stunned neighbors watched the inferno. Soon they were joined by Lubin set technicians, carpenters, film developers and assembly workers, mechanics, administrative staff, and actors, all of whom, after years of fire-drill training, had quickly evacuated their respective work areas. Some employees dared to remain behind in several plant locations in attempts to save "costly gowns and dresses of actresses"; grab drafts of "scenarios", completed scripts, and other important paperwork; and to carry out manageable pieces of expensive