Aspinock Memories
The Union Block Fire – near Christmas 1966
By Terri Pearsall, AHS Curator
 One of the more devastating fires in Putnam occurred on December 11, 1966, at 7 p.m.  A fire broke out in Union Block racing through the block, a landmark since the early days of Putnam. Sixteen local fire companies responded to the blaze. Firefighters worked feverishly to keep the flames from reaching stocks of paint, turpentine and other combustibles stored in the Chandler & Morse Hardware store, which occupied a large area of the building facing the railroad station. 
Explosion rocked the building and debris swirled across Main Street to the roof of the Hotel Putnam.  The heat from the flames was so intense that a window cracked at the Texaco Service Station on South Main Street and hundreds of onlookers had to move up South Main Street to avoid hand-sized cinders that were flying about for nearly a quarter of a mile.
At first the fire threatened the entire main business section of the city, many merchants began removing some of their goods and records from their stores, but then the wind took a fortunate shift in direction saving that section.
The fire left Union Block, The Hotel Putnam, the old fire station in ruins.  Destroyed in the Hotel Putnam were the Bamboo Cocktail Lounge, Lavallee’s Furniture Store, George Benoit’s Barber Shop, a new beauty salon, the Western Union Telegraph Co. office on the first floor.  Dr. David Bates, Dr. Robert Dinolt and Dr. Florence Prosser, all physicians who also had offices in the hotel. 
The old firehouse had been vacant since the summer but lost in the blaze was costly equipment stored there by the city highway department and the fire department’s historical files.  
Other nearby businesses suffered damage without being destroyed.
Two city blocks were leveled, and debris littered the area.  Once again, as they had in 1955, Putnam residents faced the task of redeveloping following a disaster.  Mayor Paul Bourgeois said that Putnam was in much the same position as it was in 1955.  “It rose then and it will now,” he said.
Information in this article is according to an article in the Historical Supplement to the Observer Patriot in 1980 from the archives of the Aspinock Historical Society.
Aspinock Memories graces the pages of the Putnam Town Crier to keep Putnam’s history alive.

.