The Watchman

DOMESTIC.
Washington, Dec. 16, 1836.

DISASTROUS CONFLAGRATION.

It is with no ordinary regret that we perform the duty of announcing the destruction by fire, of the building in the central part of the city, which has for years been occupied by the General Post Office, the Patent Office, and the City Post Office, with an important part of the contents of those buildings, including the entire contents of the two latter.

This calamity, great as it is, has long been feared by those old residents of Washington who knew the combustible nature of the building, the floors being all of wood, and some of them not even counter-sealed, and the custom of stowing fuel, not only coal but wood, in the vaults underneath the floor. The calamity has come at last, and affords the second demonstration, within four years, of the utter absurdity and improvidence of the structures to which the public archives, records, and government accounts have been hitherto for the most part confided.

The first alarm of fire was given by Mr. Crown, a Messenger who usually sleeps in the room connected with the City Post Office, (the Post Master's own room.) The clerks had been at work assorting the mails, until half past two o'clock, when one of the persons belonging to the office, Mr. Lansdale, passed out of the east door, and along the whole front of the building, without discovering any thing to give rise to a suspicion of danger. Not long after three o'clock Mr. Crown was roused from a light slumber by the smell of smoke. Opening the door of the city Post Office he perceived a dense smoke without any visible appearance of fire. He gave the alarm instantly, first rousing Mr. Cox, one of the clerks, who slept in a back room adjoining the Post Office, and who coming out of the door of his room with difficulty, through the smoke, hearing the fire crackling, but being unable to see any thing. The watchmen in the body of the building, some distance from the city Post Office, had perceived nothing of the smoke, until they also were alarmed by Mr. Crown.

The hour of night when all this took place being one at which the whole world was buried in the deepest sleep, it was found almost impossible to spread the alarm of fire. One of the church bells began to ring, but the ringer, not seeing any flame, ceased ringing almost as soon as he began, and it was a full half hour before the alarm bells were rung, and more than that time before an engine or a bucket of water could be commanded. As it was the fire had its own way, and was at last seen in the vault or cellar immediately under the delivery window of the city Post Office, followed shortly afterwards by flames from the windows of the latter, and, within five minutes afterwards, by flames from the roof, the fire having crept along the stair cases or partitions to the top of the building before it broke out below.

From the moment of the flames bursting out from the lower windows it was obvious that all hope of saving the building was in vain. In little more than an hour the whole interior of the building and its contents were destroyed.

The books of the General Post Office were all or nearly all saved, exertions having been made for their safety from nearly the first moment of the alarm—but a mass of papers, &c., belonging to the Office were destroyed. Not any thing was saved from the Patent Office or the city Post Office, the volume of smoke preventing any body from penetrating the latter so as to save anything.

As to the origin of the fire it is impossible to say anything, for nothing seems to be known about it, except that it was in a cellar or vault, in which pine wood and coal were stowed, all of which were probably in a state of ignition before the fire disclosed itself to the eye. We the more willingly forbear any conjecture as to the cause of the fire, since both houses of Congress have taken steps through committees, to investigate it, and in one House with power to send for persons and papers.

Of all the amount of loss of papers and property sustained by this disaster, that which is most to be regretted because irreparable, is that of the whole of the great repository of models of machines in the Patent Office. The mouldering ashes now only remain of that collected evidence of the penetration, ingenuity and enterprize which peculiarly distinguish the descendants of Europe in the western world.

THE CITY POST OFFICE.—We have mentioned in the preceeding article the destruction of all the contents of the city Post Office. All the mails of the night and morning, including letters received by other mails for distribution by those mails, except the Warren, Va., and Port Tobacco, Md., mails had been sent off before the fire occurred. All the mails received the preceeding evening and in the night for delivery at this place were destroyed, including of course all the letters for members of Congress, different officers of the Government, and editors. The transmission of mails from this place, will not, we understand be for a moment interrupted by this catastrophe.

National Intelligencer.