It was the biggest building fire to hit Dublin in a decade.
The Red Front building was one of the oldest in the downtown district and had been an icon in Dublin for years.
Sanborn insurance maps showed that the building had at one time, a wholesale grocery, a restaurant, a bicycle shop, roller skating upstairs and even an ice cream factory.
Jack Noel had his Texaco service station in the northeast corner of the building. Jack had been a real supporter of Dublin. His ads in the newspaper were often seen when there was a big event such as the yearly rodeo. Pictures show that cars could drive under the corner of the Red Front building to get gas at his service station.
Jack’s daughter, Judy Noel-Lunsford used to be at her father’s station often. She said that she loved the smell of new tires after playing around them so much as a child.
The electric power for downtown Dublin and points north, came from the substation just south of town and passed right in front of the building. When the fire broke out in the Red Front building, the electric power to much of Dublin had to be cut off. With the fire whistle signaling for volunteers, the power going off and clouds of smoke, people in town must have known that something big was going on.
The Southwestern Bell Telephone office on Blackjack Street was one of those without power. The phone company was forced to use their battery backup system to keep phones operating.
Only emergency phone calls were allowed.
The operators worked by candle light for hours since the batteries only powered the telephones.
Power was restored about 6 hours later and emergency phone power was no longer needed.
The upstairs of the Red Front building may have been used for meetings in earlier years. At the time of the fire, bank fixtures from the newly remodeled Dublin National Bank were being stored upstairs. They were a total loss.
The alarm was turned in around 6 pm on February 12, 1953 and shortly after that, Stephenville was asked to help. Stephenville sent 11 men and two trucks responding to the call. The article in the February 20th, 1953 Dublin Progress says that the back of the building was used by the Hazelwood Creamery for storage.
According to the February 20, 1953 Stephenville Empire-Tribune, one of the front walls collapsed from an explosion shortly after 6 pm. The cause of the explosion was believed to be from the gasoline storage tanks at the corner Texaco station blowing up. Firemen heard prior rumblings, dropped their water hoses and backed away until the falling bricks and plaster had cleared. During the fire both brick walls facing the Elm and Patrick St. collapsed, but the rock walls in back remained standing. Efforts to extinguish the fire were hampered when the floor of the second story and roof collapsed on the burning equipment downstairs.
It continued to burn for hours, but members of the Dublin Fire Department said that the blaze was under control after 7 pm.
In the end, the building was a total loss of about $25,000 dollars. Though the owner said that he would rebuild, he never did.
What did happen is that Bill Gaines and Mack Brown built a new Texaco station on that same site after it had been cleared. It was also referred to as the Red Front Texaco. Jack Noel went on to be a driver for the highway post office bus that ran from Waco to Eastland, mentioned in a previous Museum Matters article.
Oddly enough, that corner on Patrick Street, across from the Dublin Bottling Works is still referred to as the Red Front though there is nothing red there.
It is a remembrance of an iconic building in downtown Dublin that served the community well and came to an end with a tragic fire.