Losing a landmark
1995 inferno wipes out remaining vestiges of once grand hotel
BY JESSICA KELLER
ARGUS OBSERVER
Sunday, August 3, 2008 12:11 AM PDT
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| City emergency service personnel stand at a distance as the blazing inferno that wiped out the Moore Hotel for good in 1995 smoldered. While the hotel had long been abandoned, the building had once been an elegant and popular establishment that provided travelers to Ontario with a place to stay and the community a place to gather. |
ONTARIO — Night had settled in Ontario when flames erupted in a vacant downtown building on Oregon Street sometime before 11 p.m. Friday, Oct. 13, 1995. Within a couple of hours the fire turned into an inferno that swallowed the whole of the building, and by Saturday, a longtime Ontario landmark — the once imposing and grand Moore Hotel — was reduced to rubble.
While the building had been vacant since 1984, after another fire severely damaged the interior, the blaze in 1995 wiped away the remainder of the building that had persevered and evolved since Ontario’s early days, making it one of the top historical events of Ontario’s 125 years of history.
The Glory Days
The Moore Hotel was built in 1910 and 1911 by prominent Ontario businessman T.H. Moore just as Ontario was beginning to take its shape as a regional hub for Eastern Oregon and western Idaho. While originally more modest in size than it later became, with 45 rooms to start that soon grew to 60, the hotel was designed as a more upscale establishment that catered to the numbers of people who came to Ontario daily at the time to take their ranch livestock to auction or conduct other business.
As a girl, former editor of the Argus Observer Chris Moore, who went on to marry T.H. Moore’s grandson Bill, stayed at the hotel a number of times when her family traveled from their ranch in Jordan Valley so her father could do business in the area. She laughs when she remembers dining in the establishment’s grand dining room with her mother, two younger brothers and sister.
She said the restaurant was fancy, with nice tablecloths, plates and silverware and even finger bowls. Moore said she and her siblings did not know what the little bowls sitting on the tables were, so their mother explained they were supposed to dip their fingers in the bowls and dry them off with a napkin before eating.
“Well, my brothers weren’t about to do that, and I just pretended to,” she said.
Moore also said the hotel had a “fantastic, huge” fire place in the “enormous” main lobby that was faced with Indian artifacts and fossils.
A large room used for dances and large meetings and conventions was situated next to the dining room, and throughout, she said, nice wooden furniture and other pieces, some antiques at the time and all antique now, decorated the building.
“It was kind of the showplace of southeast Oregon,” she said. “And it was a fashionable thing to stay at the Moore Hotel, and it was quite plush.”
While popular for cattlemen’s conventions and other ranchers and farmers to stay at, the hotel became a gathering place for the local community as well, Moore said. The hotel also housed the local bus depot in the 1940s through 1960s.
The later years
Through the years the hotel had been remodeled a number of times. The last major renovation took place in 1975.
Former Ontario Fire Chief Randy Simpson, now deputy state fire marshall, said he remembers going to the lounge in the bottom floor of the building as a 21-year-old and the place being packed with people. He also said other businesses were situated in the building, which the Moore family had sold, as well, and it was always busy.
The hotel was hit by two fires in the early 1980s, and Simpson was at both, responding as a firefighter. The first was put out quickly and caused minor damage, he said. The second caused extensive damage, Simpson said, and led to its closure.
The building then sat vacant for a number of years, and the abandoned building became an eyesore, with plywood across the entrances to keep out homeless people looking for shelter and others causing mischief.
That infrequently worked, however, as Ontario Police Chief Mike Kee, who was then a patrolman, recalls.
“We would go in there sometimes at night and chase folks out,” he said. “So it wasn’t uncommon for people to be in there.”
The building had gotten to be such a problem, city officials and downtown businessmen discussed the state of the structure and what should be done to remedy the situation. According to an October 1995 Argus Observer article, the city manager at the time, the police chief and downtown business community members agreed at a meeting Oct. 3, the building was an “eyesore” and recommended the building be torn down and a rehabilitation effort launched on that section of the street.
Coincidentally or ironically, perhaps both, the building burned down 10 days later, and by Oct. 14, a crane from Boise was already dismantling what was left of the building.
The fire
When the final fire struck, Moore was completely unaware — sleeping peacefully in her bed. She, instead, heard the news from a friend the next morning, and she and her husband, who has since died, broke the news to his mother, who was very fond of the building, Moore said.
“My husband and I were really shocked and unhappy,” she said.
Kee and Simpson remember the fire very well, however. According to the Oct. 1, 1995, Argus Observer, the fire was reported by a police officer on patrol who saw white smoke billowing from the buildings. The fire department arrived shortly after, and Simpson, who was then deputy fire chief, said all or almost all neighboring fire departments arrived on mutual aid soon after that.
Simpson was one of the first firemen to enter the building through the basement door next to the alley, and he said, by that time, the fire had already spread to other levels of the five-story structure.
“We had heavy, heavy smoke boiling out of all the floors,” he said, adding the heaviest fire was in the basement and was probably the largest amount of fire contained in one building that he has seen during his career.
He said, when he and a few others entered they saw a 4-inch cast iron pipe glowing red and sagging, it was that hot.
When Simpson and his crew turned a nozzle to the ceiling, a big chunk of charred ceiling fell down on the floor, and the firefighters knew it was time to beat a hasty retreat because nothing could be done for the building. Instead they directed their attention to preventing the fire from spreading to neighboring buildings.
Once on fire, he said, the structure was ripe for disaster because an elevator shaft that ran through the center of the building acted as a flue, carrying the fire up from the basement quickly.
“It was just a nice little chimney for it,” he said.
Simpson said the north wall of the building collapsed early in the morning, and it was fortunate no firefighters were under that section at the time, although bricks did hit a few of Simpson’s crew, who were standing across the street.
Meanwhile, city police officers were at the perimeters of the scene keeping people and vehicles away through the night. A large crowd of more than 100 people flocked to the scene and watched the spectacle, Kee said.
It was a sad ending, Kee and Simpson both said, but both pointed out the building had been vacant for a long time before then and was no longer the crowning glory of Ontario’s landmarks.
“And, unfortunately, for it to be abandoned that many years, it lost the aura that it had,” Simpson said.
He said, while they could never prove it and eventually labeled the circumstances behind the fire as unknown, fire officials suspected people had something to do with the start of the blaze, either setting it by accident or intentionally.
Moore, whose family has only memories, some pieces of furniture and photos, said Ontario lost more than just a building when the Moore Hotel burned down.
“It lost a fair-sized part of history,” she said. “It was a landmark.”
