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Weather Vane Restaurant, 4137 Whitney Avenue
Monday, December 7, 1964
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| Ladder 1 with ladder pipe in operation |
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Winter 1964-65 was a memorable period for the Hamden Fire Department. Fires would destroy two important Hamden restaurants in December and one radio station in early January. The first of these fires occurred on the first Monday of December.
Since 1936, the Weather Vane Restaurant had occupied the rambling 50-year old wood-frame building at 4137 Whitney Avenue, once known as the old Mount Carmel Inn. Twenty-eight years later, on the morning of December 7, 1964, the well-known Hamden landmark was destroyed in a spectacular fire that was believed to have started in the kitchen. The two young daughters of owner Claire DeMaio barely escaped with their lives as they scrambled onto a porch roof to escape the flames that prevented them from exiting their second floor bedroom.
The old Second Platoon, led by Deputy Chief Everett Doherty, had just come on duty at 8 a.m. Recruit firefighters Ed Doiron, Charlie Carlson, and Harold Mangler, who had started on the job only two weeks earlier, were still in training with Deputy Chief Training Officer Dan Hume in the basement of Fire Headquarters.
Firefighter Gil Spencer was assigned to Engine 4 with Lt. Bill Hines and driver Johnny Hoffman. Milner Benham and Paul Reutenauer were on Rescue 2, which was at Headquarters in those days. Chief V. Paul Leddy and Marshal Al Purce shared a tiny office at the top of the stairs on the second floor on the north end of the Town Hall, right next to the fire station.
Gil recalls that right after he reported to work that morning, he was specially detailed to drive Car 40, Chief Leddy’s 1962 Rambler, to Station 2. The chief wanted it gassed up and cleaned off after the snowfall the night before. Immediately after roll call, Gil loaded his gear into Car 40 and headed for Station 2.
The guys at Headquarters and the other stations were in the midst of their morning chores. At 8:40 the bell hit. The dispatcher announced that is was a fire at the Weather Vane. Engine 5, Engine 4, Rescue 2 and Ladder 1 were dispatched. The volunteers of Co. 5 were also toned out.
Old department records indicate that the Drillmaster was not assigned a department vehicle until 1968. So just how Dep. Chief Hume and his three recruits got to the Weather Vane is not recalled by Ed Doiron. But they all piled into someone's car, probably Hume's personal car, and off they went. Chief Leddy had to bum a ride with Fire Marshal Purce in Car 41, a 1957 Ford, because the chief's car was at Station 2 being cleaned up.
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Leddy and Purce were just passing the Big-Y near Sherman Avenue when the chief saw the enormous amount of black smoke and called for a second alarm, which brought Engine 3 and Rescue 1 from Putnam Avenue and Engine 2 from Circular Avenue.
Today, Deputy Fire Chief Clark Hurlburt recalls that the late Jimmy Mathis, an 18-year old Mt. Carmel Volunteer firefighter at the time, told him years later that the first radio transmission he heard from the fire ground was "Looks like a good 10-8!"
Deputy Chief Doherty had begun his rounds in Car 30 and was at Station 2 when the call came in. Minutes earlier, Gil Spencer had parked Chief Leddy’s car out by the Repair Shop gasoline pump in the back of Station 2. Dep. Chief Doherty told Spencer to grab his gear. The two of them responded in Car 30, heading up Circular to Cherry Hill, then Benham to Mix, over to Shepard, and out to Whitney.
A big problem facing firefighters was that the fire had a good head start before it was reported. This was evidenced by the fact that the two daughters only discovered the fire as the onrush of flames impinged on their second floor bedroom. Fire Marshal Al Purce was later quoted as saying that in his nearly forty years in the fire service "I have never seen a building so full of fire so quickly." Another big problem for firefighters were the subfreezing temperatures that immediately created icing hazards all over the fire scene.
When Dep. Chief Doherty and Spencer arrived at the scene in Car 30, Chief Leddy was standing in the middle of the Weather Vane parking lot. “Where’s my car?” he wanted to know. Spencer said that it was still at the Shop at Station 2. The chief was somewhat annoyed (an understatement, according to Spencer) because his gear was in the trunk of his car. The chief then ordered someone from the Shop to drive his car to the scene.
Firefighter Tom Doherty, a four year veteran and son of the Deputy Chief, was off-duty. He was just leaving Liggett’s Drug Store at the Hamden Plaza when he heard the deep wail of a Federal siren approaching. When he saw Engine 2 barreling up Dixwell Avenue toward Centerville, he knew something was up. Visoring his brow with the palm of his hand, Tom looked all around. And there it was, in the far north end of town, the enormous black cloud billowing skyward.
Tom drove straight to Headquarters to get his gear. It was the Weather Vane, he was told, and it was “going good.” And it was. When he got there, the flames were at about the same level as seen in the now-well-known Tom Pettis color photo that graced the cover of the Sunday Register supplement a few weeks later.
One 17-year old future Hamden firefighter was riding north in the green CR&L bus bound for Waterbury, on his way to work in Cheshire. Traffic slowed to a crawl near the Connecticut Donut Co. But when the bus finally rounded the curve just past River Road, the Weather Vane conflagration came into full view. The now-retired firefighter recalls, “Flames were coming from almost every window and leaping forty to fifty feet above the roof. It was a staggering sight, and a sad one, to see that grand old landmark go up like that.”
All northbound traffic was rerouted up Brooksvale Avenue and back out to Rt. 10 at Ives Corner in Cheshire.
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| Lt. William Hines |
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Spencer recalls that Engine 5, probably manned by Dave Howe and Fred Fletcher, was at the hydrant near the front of the building. Engine 4 was in the parking area near the south side of the main building – it can be seen there in the 8mm home movie that is linked from this website. The ladder truck, probably manned by Frank Eitler and Bernie Early, was on the north side of the building with the ladder pipe set up.
On the second alarm, Capt. Bob O’Donnell, Art Smith and another firefighter responded on Engine 2. John O'Hare recalls that he was driver of Engine 3 with Lt. Dan O’Connell and another firefighter, probably Ben Mikolinski. O'Hare also thinks Charlie Esposito was probably on Rescue 1 with John Tramontano.
Spencer said that since Engine 4 responded one man short, Lt. Hines must have been alone in the kitchen on his belly with an 1½” line, because the only other guy on Engine 4 was driver Johnny Hoffman, who was operating the pump. As a firefighter, Lt. Bill Hines was no stranger to danger. At a time when virtually every department member born between 1908 and 1928 was a World War II veteran, Bill was the lone Pearl Harbor veteran. 23 years to the day earlier, Bill was stationed at Schofield Barracks adjacent to Hickam Field, when the Japanese launched a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. Compared to that, the Weather Vane was a piece of cake.
Later on, after Chief Leddy ordered everyone out of the main building, Spencer and fellow firefighters were on 2½” lines outside, but making little progress. The fire had made significant headway well before the first piece arrived, and numerous interior partitions made it very difficult to reach the seat of the fire. Finally, they got permission to use the deck gun atop Engine 4 - the same deck gun that was once on the 1938 Diamond T squad. Once in operation, the deck gun was probably delivering about 600 GPM.
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| The site today. The old cocktail lounge is at the right rear. |
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Tom Doherty spent the entire day at the Weather Vane with a crew that did its best to save the cocktail lounge, the only unburned portion of the building, which was to the south and rear of the main building. They were successful. In 1966, the Weather Vane reopened in that portion of the building. And the old cocktail lounge still stands today.
An engine and crew remained at the Weather Vane all night on fire watch, to catch small fires that developed from within the devastation. Spencer and many other members of his platoon were back the next day to continue the fire watch. A state inspector was also there to ensure that the bottled alcoholic beverages were destroyed.
It was a miracle that Claire DeMaio’s two daughters got out of the blazing building alive. But some irreplaceable artwork by Mrs. DeMaio’s late husband and world-renowned artist, Salvatore DeMaio, was lost forever. Estimates of the loss of the building and contents were in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. And that was 45 years ago!
Newspaper accounts acknowledged that a delay in reporting the fire was probably responsible for the building being so well involved when the first fire apparatus arrived. Chief Leddy reported that the first call to reach the fire department came from “an unidentified man at 8:40 a.m.” The New Haven Register reported that “a hysterical woman, also unidentified, reportedly called the police department 5 or 10 minutes earlier, but only said there was a fire in Mount Carmel.”
The Register also reported that fire officials said that fire apparatus responded very quickly, “but that first report [of the fire] may have been delayed because passersby and neighbors felt that someone else had already called.”
The Weather Vane’s main building was never rebuilt on the footprint of the original building. Apparently a snafu resulting from the delay of more than a year prevented the “grandfathering” of new construction as close to Route 10 as the original building was situated.
The Weather Vane was one of the most memorable fires in the annals of the Hamden Fire Department. But Tom Doherty remembers that day for another reason. It was his birthday. (First Pearl Harbor, now this!) Hard to believe, but at the time Tom was still in his twenties!
Eddy Doiron recalls that Harold Mangler, Charlie Carlson and he received plenty of on the job training during their first few weeks on the job. Only seven days after the Weather Vane fire, they responded with Dep. Chief Hume to a man trapped in a caved-in trench on Skiff Street. Regular fire crews along with the three new recruits received commendations for their valiant and successful efforts to save the man.
Eighteen days after the Weather Vane, on a balmy 70-degree Christmas Day, the department fought its next major blaze. More on that one as we get closer to Christmas of 2009.
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Those who can add new information or corrections to this article, especially other Hamden firefighters,
are welcome to contact Dave Johnson at 203-288-2214 or hfdbadge102@aol.com.
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| Weather Vane Restaurant - December 7, 1964 (Photo by Joseph Pettits, © 1964 - New Haven Register) |
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| (Photo credited to Mongillo Studio, 52 Crown Street, New Haven) |
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| This photo by John Mongillo, Jr. appeared on the front page of the New Haven Register the next day, with the following caption "Requiem for a well-loved inn. Blackened bones of Weather Vane." |
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| © New Haven Register - December 8, 1964 (Courtesy of G. Donald Steele - Photo by John Mongillo, Jr.) |
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| © The New Haven Register - Tuesday, December 8, 1964 (Articles courtesy of G. Donald Steele) |
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| Aftermath |
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Weather Vane Restaurant Fire
Monday, December 7, 1964
Gil Spencer has provided an 8mm home movie, taken by his uncle, Harold Spencer of Hamden, of the December 1964 fire that destroyed the Weather Vane Restaurant. The Weather Vane was a well known landmark that stood just past Brooksvale Avenue on the east side of Whitney Avenue.
The movie has been digitally transcribed and is now available on YouTube. Click on the photo at right to watch the YouTube video.
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| CLICK photo to view video (Photo by Joseph Pettis) |
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