MARSEILLES — Two historic buildings and a third vintage structure went up in flames about 2 p.m. Friday in the city’s downtown, a block north of the Freedom Wall Memorial at the Illinois River.

One firefighter was reportedly overcome with smoke inhalation in the blaze. The name and other information was not immediately available. No other injuries were reported as of late afternoon Friday.

The blaze consumed the former Marseilles Foundry and the Iverson Welding Shop on Commercial Street. Both are two- and three-story buildings dating to about the early 1900s, but abandoned in recent years.

Also consumed was the former Certain-Teed Roofing Company’s one-story warehouse, which had served as an auction barn until it, too, was abandoned some years ago.

All three buildings are located in the same block on Commercial Street, directly north of the former Nabisco Company’s nine-story brick building which, too, is abandoned.

During the height of the blaze, the wooden planks on the former railroad bridge across the North Raceway began burning. Cinders and burning particles fell into the parking lot at the former Nabisco facility, causing little, if any, damage there.

Marseilles Fire Chief Mick Garrison said at the scene he couldn’t comment on the fire because he hadn’t begun to gather any information on the incident.

Some of the several hundred spectators thronging the sidewalks to watch the blaze indicated the fire was started by three youngsters playing in the former auction barn.

The city of Marseilles instituted court action several years ago in efforts to get the old foundry building razed. The building had been deemed a hazard, as sections of the west wall and windows had fallen out, and the roof was starting to give way.

City Engineer Michael Etscheid was among those watching the flames spread from building to building. He noted the city was to return to court the latter part of June for a hearing in the efforts to raze the old foundry.

Firefighters were able to halt the flames from spreading to a beauty shop and a bar and grill on the ground floor of the two-story vintage brick building just east of the foundry and Iverson buildings.

One spectator indicated a Vietnam War veteran who lived in the small, ground floor apartment between the Iverson building and the beauty shop building owned by Ron Boetto of Marseilles lost his heroism medal and newspaper clippings on the award in the blaze.

The spectator said the veteran could not locate the items when he evacuated the building.
Also apparently saved from the flames by firefighters was a former hardware building from about the 1960s or 1970s. The Marseilles Labor Local 393 purchased that building last winter and plans to remodel it for a new, larger labor hall.

Several members of Labor Local 393 noted if that building went up in flames, they would have to build anew, instead.

The local also was in the process of purchasing the foundry site, after which plans were to remove the building and turn the area into a parking lot for the labor hall.

Marseilles Mayor Jim Trager was among those watching the flames, which sent black smoke billowing 80 to 100 feet into the sky for more than an hour before firefighters began getting the upper hand.

Trager recalled this as being probably the largest fire in the city since a historic grain elevator burned on the Illinois and Michigan Canal in the heart of Marseilles about 20 years ago.

Other spectators said the blaze that consumed a furniture and hardware store on South Main Street 25 to 30 years ago was a close second to the elevator incident.

One spectator noted the very large fire in the late 1960s that demolished the warehouse complex where Nabisco stored bales of paper for manufacture of cardboard boxes. The complex was just west of the buildings that burned Friday.

Most people watching the flames had little to say about the incident, other than to indicate how fortunate it was for it to have happened in old buildings that had seen their day.

Assisting the Marseilles Volunteer Fire Department under mutual aid agreements were fire departments from Seneca, Grand Ridge, and Ottawa.

Firefighters stretched some hose as far as the Illinois River for water to fight the flames.