Plate

This black and white transfer-printed earthenware plate made possibly by the Staffordshire firm of Thomas Dimmock & Co. features a view from Coenties Slip of the burning of the Merchant's Exchange in the "Great Fire of New York." The Exchange was designed and built in 1824 by New York architect Josiah R. Brady (ca. 1760–1832) and his partner Martin E. Thompson (1789–1877). The fire that destroyed the building began the night of December 16, 1835 on the corner of Merchant (Hanover) and Pearl Streets and raged throughout the next day as efforts to extinguish the fire were hampered by negligence of fire companies, inadequate water supplies and freezing cold temperatures. Nineteen hundred firefighters from as far away as Philadelphia battled the blaze. Causing more property damage than any other fire in city history, the fire destroyed 674 buildings in the more than twenty-block area east of Broad Street and south of Wall Street that comprised the heart of New York's wholesale and merchant district. Local merchants suffered over twenty million dollars worth of losses bankrupting nearly all of the city's fire insurance companies. Among the buildings destroyed, the marble-facaded Merchant's Exchange built in the Greek Revival style from 1825 to 1827 was considered one of the city’s finest structures; its burning represented a monumental loss. The view of the burning of the Exchange on the plate was based on a lithograph titled "View of the Great Conflagration of December 16th and 17th, 1835; from Coenties Slip" by John Henry Bufford (active 1835–1871), one of the nineteenth century's leading American lithographers. Bearing the inscription "N. Currier's Lith. No. 1," the lithograph was published by the period's other great lithographer, Nathaniel Currier (1813–1888) with whom Bufford had apprenticed in the Boston lithography shop of Pendleton and Company (1825–1836). The view is one of three depicting the burning of the Exchange with borders illustrating fire equipment and winged phoenixes amidst flames separated by scrolls inscribed "THE GREAT FIRE OF / THE CITY OF NEW YORK." The other two views are titled "Burning of the Merchant’s Exchange, New York" and "Ruins, Merchant's Exchange." A plate, 14.102.180, with the latter view is in the American Wing's collection. Both plates are marked on the back with the printed initial "D," a mark known to have been used by Thomas Dimmock & Co. Refer to the Dictionary for a definition of the term "transfer printing" and for information about Dimmock.