Winecoff Hotel Fire

Information Sought On Possible Survivor

2007-05-14T21:47:00.000-05:00

A new name has surfaced in our study of the Winecoff fire: Jacob Mathias Furr Jr. He was a civil engineer from North Carolina and was forty eight years old at the time of the fire. He died in 1953. One of our readers is seeking confirmation that J.M. (Jake) Furr was a survivor of the Winecoff Hotel fire.
Furr may have been among the mysterious group of gamblers who escaped from room 330 and tried to remain anonymous.
E-mail allenbgoodwin@yahoo.com.

Winecoff Feature Story Well Received

2007-04-29T22:53:00.000-05:00

The TBS STORYline feature story on the 1946 Winecoff fire was broadcast in the Atlanta area April 28th. The story, produced by R. Anna Millman, was well received:

"I thought it was an excellent piece – the tone was right. As good as anything that has been done on TV on the fire."--Sam Heys

The person that deserves the credit here is Anna!! Wow! ...she knew just what to pull from and combine it together in a wonderful editing job!"--Janet Cox

If and when the video is made available on the TBS STORYline website it will announced here on winecoff.org.

Winecoff Feature Story To Air

2007-04-03T11:55:00.000-05:00

The story of the 1946 Winecoff Hotel fire will be featured in the April 28th episode of TBS STORYline, a weekly magazine series which airs on WTBS, channel 17 in Atlanta. The feature story will include interviews, newsreel footage and vintage photographs from the disaster often dubbed "Atlanta's Titanic". The piece will be broadcast Saturday April 28th at 9am ET in the Atlanta area only, but may be accessible to a wider audience via the TBS STORYline website sometime after the broadcast. http://www.tbsstoryline.com/

Ellis Hotel Still A Go!

2007-03-17T20:06:00.000-05:00

Be sure to check the March 17th edition of The Atlanta Journal & Constitution for a through update on the progress of the renovations now underway at the Winecoff Hotel building. The good news: the re-developers haven't given up! Despite a few setbacks and cost overruns the work continues with the new Ellis Hotel now scheduled to open in September of this year. The story by Leon Stafford is on the front page of the Business section, below the fold.

Winecoff Fire Alert! In Search of Richard Fletcher

2006-10-02T17:01:00.000-05:00

In the continuing effort to learn more about survivors of the Winecoff Hotel fire, information is now being sought about Richard Fletcher, a visitor in room 510-12 on the morning of the 1946 fire.

Richard Fletcher Facts:
Here is what we think we know about Richard Fletcher.
Born: April 2, 1917 Died: August 30, 1993
Hometown: Dayton, Ohio

Home Address in 1946: 115 Kent Place Dayton, Ohio
Last address known to the Veterans Administration as of 1952:
1205 Newark Place Dayton, Ohio
He was married to M. Marguerite Reed Fletcher. They were married and divorced twice. Together they had two children, David Ross Fletcher and Linda Gale Fletcher. His sister in law's name was Kay Reed.

As of December 23, 1946 he was Tec 4th Grade, U.S. Army
Stationed at Military Personnel Branch, Headquarters Detachment, Ft. McPherson, Georgia
Military I.D.# ASN35237795
Here is another potentially relevant # : (RPC) C#11769557.
He had been in the Army three years and at Ft. McPherson for about two months having reenlisted.

If you ever knew Richard Fletcher or can supply a verifiable photograph of him contact allenbgoodwin@yahoo.com

The search continues for information about 1946 Winecoff Hotel employees Alice Edmonds and Rozena Neal. http://winecoff.org/hotel/2004_11_01_archive.html

Richard Fletcher Confirmed Deceased

2007-03-10T22:22:00.000-05:00

The decades long search for Richard Fletcher has reached a sad end. Mr Fletcher's death in 1993 has at last been confirmed. It had been hoped that Mr. Fletcher could personally offer some valuable information about the Winecoff Fire. Hope remains that he may have left writings or stories with family or friends. The search for a verifiable photograph of him continues.

Large Crowd Attends Winecoff Program

2006-03-13T07:58:00.000-05:00

Allen B. Goodwin and Sam Heys gave a lecture on The Winecoff Fire: The Untold Story of America's Deadliest Hotel Fire on Sunday March 5, 2006 as part of a special program at the Margaret Mitchell House & Museum in Atlanta.

The event also included a book signing and began with a reception at 3 p.m. The lecture followed at 4.

The program was part of the Fourth Annual Phoenix Files: A Citywide Celebration of Living Landmarks, sponsored by the Atlanta Preservation Center and 19 Preservation Partners. The award-winning, weeklong event -- March 4-12 -- spotlighted Atlanta's historic sites with 56 events at 30 venues. The Winecoff Hotel building, built in 1913, still stands at the corner of Peachtree and Ellis streets in downtown Atlanta.

The Winecoff Fire: The Untold Story of America's Deadliest Hotel Fire, published in 1993 by Longstreet Press, was critically acclaimed by a dozen Southern newspapers and went into three printings. It is the story of the victims and survivors of the 1946 Winecoff Hotel fire and of the botched investigation that followed the fire, which remains the worst hotel fire in U.S. history with 119 deaths. In the aftermath of the fire, fire codes were changed throughout America.

The program drew a crowd of more than 140 people. Following the comments of the authors, those in attendance with a connection to the fire introduced themselves and spoke briefly..

Among those attending were two Pulitzer Prize winners: Arnold Hardy, who took the famous photo of a woman leaping from the burning hotel, and George Goodwin, an Atlanta Journal reporter who witnessed and covered the fire. Also on hand were two Winecoff survivors - Bob Cox of Hays, Kansas, and Bob Irvin of Atlanta.

Family members of the following Winecoff victims attended - Patsy Uphold, Christy Hinson, Mary Minor, Earnest Weatherly, Mary Stinespring, and Fleming and Grace Winecoff.

Family members of the following survivors were also in attendance - Dorothy Moen Cox, Nelson Thatch, Mildred Johnson, Reid and Cary Horne, and Michael Conners. The daughter of Winecoff firefighter Boots Pittman was present as well.

The program was videotaped and may soon be available at nominal cost from winecoff.org.

Book

2003-06-18T20:29:00.000-05:00

The Winecoff Fire: The Untold Story of America's Deadliest Hotel Fire

Email co-author Allen B. Goodwin: allenbgoodwin@yahoo.com.

Atlanta's Winecoff Hotel had been billed as "fireproof, " but in the predawn hours of December 7, 1946--on the fifth anniversary of Pearl Harbor--280 of its citizens awoke suddenly in a hotel already burning wildly out of control.

This was the worst hotel fire in U.S. history, killing 119 people. The 15-story building still stands. At the time, the building had neither fire escapes, fire doors, nor sprinklers. For two and a half hours, Atlanta fire fighters and others from nearby towns battled valiantly in the cold to save the majority of the 280 guests. Their ladders reached only to the eighth floor and their nets were not strong enough to withstand jumps of more than 70 feet. Numerous guests died on the sidewalks and in the alley behind the building. Thirty of the 119 victims were among Georgia's most promising high school students, who had come to Atlanta to attend the YMCA's Youth Assembly at the Capitol.

The Winecoff fire became the watershed event in fire safety. Within days, cities across America began enacting more stringent safety ordinances. The fact that the Winecoff fire remains the worst hotel fire in U.S. history is testimony to its impact on modern fire safety codes. Here is the story of the catastrophe, and of the investigation that went awry. 30 photographs

Publisher: Longstreet Press (May 1993)

Over 30 pictures throughout the book, including the famous Pulitzer Prize photo and a hotel floor-plan

ISBN is 1-56352-069-9

This book is out of print, but you may wish to contact Allen B. Goodwin of Roswell GA at (770) 992-9515. Allen co-authored the book with Sam Heys and has some extra copies left.

Winecoff Hotel Fire 60th Anniversary

2006-11-15T22:10:00.000-05:00

On Sunday, December 3, 2006 the Atlanta Fire Department hosted a special ceremony and reception honoring:
Firefighters
Survivors
Victims’ Families &
Eyewitnesses of the 1946 Winecoff fire

The event was held at
The Spotted Dog Tavern
(formerly Fire Station #11)
30 North Avenue
Atlanta, GA.

Fire Station #11 was the home of some of the first responders to the Winecoff fire.

The City of Atlanta Fire Department's special remembrance marking the milestone 60th anniversary included a memorable ceremony, as well as a book signing of “The Winecoff Fire: The Untold Story of America’s Deadliest Hotel Fire” by Sam Heys and Allen B. Goodwin. Guests took the opportunity to share stories and remembrances. There was also an update about the current renovation of the hotel.

The program took place in the upstairs meeting room.
You can read and hear WSB Radio's Sandra Parrish's report on this moving event:
http://wsbradio.com/news/2006_winecoff_anniv.html

Sixty Years Ago

2006-12-06T19:53:00.000-05:00

On December 7, 1946 at 3:42 am the first alarm came into Atlanta Fire Department headquarters: "The Winecoff Hotel is on fire."
At 4:02 am the forth, final and "general alarm"- the one reserved for a citywide conflagration-went out.

For the next two and a half hours everything good, bad, improbable and certain about the human experience played out. Few events in the course of human history can match the Winecoff Fire for extremes.

No one who was there has ever been the same since. Every witness was affected for the rest of their lives. The shock waves affected thousands more and still ripple today, as we continue to seek new witnesses and others with information about the fire.

May we remember always the 119 victims and their families.

Front Page News !!!

2006-12-06T12:26:00.000-05:00

All students of the Winecoff fire are urged to pick up a copy of the Atlanta Journal & Constitution from Monday December 4th to see a fantastic front page story on the remembrance ceremony & reception hosted by the Atlanta Fire Department.

Another Unsung Hero of the Winecoff Hotel Fire Has Been Discovered!

2006-10-30T14:07:00.000-05:00

John McKuhen, 80 years old and now living in Florida, was a 20-year-old military policeman stationed at Ft. McPherson in Atlanta when he and five other MPs were called to the Winecoff well before daybreak on Saturday, December 7, 1946. They were assigned to recover victims from the still smoldering rooms of the hotel.
Working in pairs, McKuhen and the MPs made trip after trip up the winding stairway – at times, through knee-deep water coming down the stairs. He recalls firefighters lining the stairway assisting people up and down the treacherous stairway.
“I guess we started from the third floor – they may have had the third floor cleared – from the fourth floor up, I remember,” he said.
“We’d go into a room ... of course we couldn’t go in until the firemen had put the fire out down that particular hallway, and as they would get the fire out and give us a signal, then we’d go in and start bringing the people out and that’s the way it worked all the way up.”
“I remember one instance, I think it was the tenth floor. I went up with a fireman on that trip. It was down the hall, I don’t remember what the room number was but I remember the room was on the right-hand side of the hall. We went into this room, and a man and his wife and two children, a boy and a girl, probably in their early teens, and the children were laying on the bed on their stomach with their heads laying toward their parents and had their hands in the position of prayer. The parents were knelt by the bed with their hands in the position of prayer. I assume that's the way that they perished,” said McKuhen.
“That's the one thing that really stood with me. It was an experience that you never forget.”
Following the Winecoff fire, building codes around the world were modernized and upgraded to enhance fire safety. Each victim recovered had a silent message for the world: "This needn't happen to you." Because there were so many of them, 119, their silent messages were at last heard: in Congress, State Legislatures and Parliaments.
John McKuhen was discharged from the Army ten days after the fire. He re-enlisted ten months later, again as a military policeman, and served another twenty years.
“Being in the military police, you see plane crashes and car crashes and so forth, but I've never seen nothing that would affect you like the Winecoff fire.”

A Picture of Progress

2006-09-25T19:36:00.000-05:00

Breathing new life into the Winecoff Hotel is no small undertaking. This photo, taken September 25th, shows that the old window frames are now gone. Other signs of progress abound. It has begun in earnest!

Winecoff Building Restoration Underway as Title Questions Roil

2006-07-14T10:55:00.000-05:00

Restoration of the old Winecoff Hotel is at last underway! That's the good news. What is not as clear and evident is who will emerge the victor in an ownership dispute, long simmering and now made clearer by this article recently published in "The Sunday Paper". Click
here for the article.

Scores Attend Ellis Hotel Groundbreaking, Praise Redevelopment Plan

2006-04-29T00:30:00.000-05:00

"I'll believe it when I see it!"

That has been my answer to any and all redevelopment plans put forward over the years to restore the Winecoff Hotel. After all, there have been so many of them and yet the strategically placed building just sits and sits. Generation after generation of pigeons have roosted inside the structure flitting in and out through broken windows. Neglected for so long, the building that towers fifteen stories above the highest piece of ground in downtown Atlanta, has become virtually invisible to most Atlantans. Amazing!

Now comes the latest effort to revive the building. The new developers have at least shown that they can put on a show. The 10 am "groundbreaking" ceremony held April 21st offered new hope that the old hotel will again be put to good use. Held beneath a portable white tent on the tiny space owned by MARTA next to the building, speaker after speaker extolled the virtues of the new plan. It all sounded surprisingly credible.

Atlanta firefighters guarded the event as if to silently give their blessing to the new plan. Each one of them knows well the story of what happened there in 1946 and in turn they looked at the building and paused, no doubt thinking, "it could have been me, it could still happen to me."

TV reporters scrambled to get a quick education about the history of the building and the new plan for their live shots at noon. Like so many, they had driven by the building dozens of times and hardly noticed it. Only WSB radio reporter Sandra Parrish had come prepared.

A troop of loud protesters could be overheard through parts of the ceremony chanting, "Stop mortgage fraud." They had come at the behest of Courtney Dillard, the last in a long string of would-be redevelopers who have seen their dreams dashed, their money vanish.

The sun shown brightly and when the speakers had had their say the crowd was invited inside to the area that was once the hotel's lobby. There the "groundbreaking" took place. Actually, a dozen or so silver hammers were handed out to those who are involved with the new plan and on the count of three they all took a few smacks at a piece of dry wall, knocked a few holes in it then left it standing and damaged like the rest of the hotel.

How dreary the old lobby looked, long overdue for a face lift. The only means of orientation for students of the Winecoff fire were the elevator doors and the structural pillars.

When the crowd had drifted away and the TV reporters moved across Peachtree St. so their cameras could glimpse the enormous "invisible" structure, down the stairs, a little short of breath, came a real life connection to The Winecoff fire: Janet Cox - daughter of survivor Dorothy Moen Cox. I looked at her and in an instant I knew where she had been, room 730.

"Did you visit Mama's room?" I asked.
"I saw Mama's room," she replied.

We all live for days worth remembering. Long after everyone at the ceremony has forgotten it. Whether the new plan succeeds or fails the day's most poignant and memorable moment will be, of course, the one attached to the Winecoff fire.

After 60 Years: A New Eyewitness Steps Forward

2006-04-21T05:51:00.000-05:00

Dear Mr. Goodwin,

I read your book on the Winecoff fire when it first came out and have wondered how to get in touch with you ever since. I was present on the street on that terrible night. I had been to a high school dance and afterward had driven downtown to meet some friends at an all-night restaurant for a late night breakfast. On my way home, as I drove up the street beside the hotel, I heard horrifying screams coming from the alley behind the hotel. A small crowd was gathering and I parked the car to see what was happening. At that moment I heard the sirens of the approaching fire trucks.

As the firefighters were getting organized it became apparent that they did not have the manpower to handle the nets and they asked for volunteers from bystanders. I was one who did volunteer and was there throughout the night and even assisted in carrying out bodies the next morning.

At sixty years removed my recollections are just a confused blur highlighted by a few snapshot memories. I cannot reconstruct a time line of where I was or how long I spent in any given activity or how much as just a spectator. I did identify several incidents in which I was actively involved, particularly the net jump of the man I now know was named Alvin Millman. I don't know how many men are supposed to man those nets but I do know we didn't have enough. The net did break Mr. Millman's fall but he hit the ground pretty hard. I was surprised and gratified that he got up and walked away apparently uninjured.

From my recollection your account of the events on the street was stunningly accurate, so much so that I almost wished I had not read your book. I found it most unsettling as you can imagine.

Reliving the events of that awful night is something that I approach reluctantly. As an eight year old child I was rescued from a house fire by a neighbor who caught me as I jumped from a second story window. That fire took the lives of my mother and my younger brother. I do believe that was the cause of my eagerness to give assistance when asked and of my staying through the night. I believe it also contributed to the deep depression that enveloped me for several days following the Winecoff tragedy. But, thanks be, the seventeen year old psyche is resilient.
Jonathan Phelps

Winecoff is on the Move

2006-04-10T19:06:00.000-05:00

A groundbreaking ceremony is announced for the reopening of the former Winecoff Hotel at 176 Peachtree, with the new name to be unveiled at the groundbreaking.

From:
http://www.atlantadowntown.com/NewsWinecoff_Ground.asp
and
http://www.atlantada.com/media/PulseofProgressApril06.pdf :

The long-awaited redevelopment of this property will return the building to its former glory as a luxury boutique hotel, enhanced by state-of-the art technology and design. The developer, Kelco/FB Winecoff LLC, has enlisted Boykin Management Company, a leading hotel management company specializing in independent and boutique properties across the U.S., to oversee the day-to-day operations of the 127-room hotel. We invite you to attend this long-awaited groundbreaking ceremony for this catalytic project in the heart of Atlanta's Central Business District on April 21 st at 10:00 am. The hotel will also get a new name, to be unveiled during this ceremony.

Newly Discovered: Unidentified Survivors

2006-01-19T21:47:00.000-05:00

If you recognize anyone in these photographs, please email co-author Allen Goodwin at allenbgoodwin@yahoo.com

Some Pictures

2005-03-09T21:39:00.000-05:00

A couple pictures:

Winecoff Alert: In Search Of

2004-11-24T22:00:00.000-05:00

Newspaperman Harold Lamar of Atlanta is in search of information on two Winecoff fire survivors, Alice Edmonds and Rozena Neal.

Edmonds and Neal were employees of the hotel on the night of the fire and were among the first to discover the fire.

Lamar is searching for anyone who knew or was related to these two brave black women.

If you have information to share, contact Harold Lamar at (404) 524-6426 ext. 34. Or contact Harold hrldlamar@yahoo.com or Winecoff Fire co-author Allen B. Goodwin allenbgoodwin@yahoo.com.

Newly Discovered: Firestorm

2006-01-18T21:52:00.000-05:00