The lot was home to a timber-frame saloon and pool hall in the 1890s—one of many such seedy establishments that dotted the Square before Lawrenceburg voted to go “dry” in the early 20th century. But, after that burned, a brick building was raised that became a dry goods store and served for many years as the Lawrenceburg post office. But what other stories can a building that was probably built in the ashes of one of our greatest local manmade disasters tell us?

Perhaps more than any other element, fire has shaped the way that our Square looks today. The buildings on the Square have burned so many times that none of the structures now standing on the Square were there when the city was founded in 1819. In fact, although it is difficult to determine exactly how old some of those buildings are, there is probably not a single standing structure on the Square that wasn’t built in the 20th century.

Throughout the first century of Lawrenceburg’s existence, major fires gutted the shoddily-constructed timber frame buildings of the early Square with shocking regularity. Particularly in the era before the Civil War, brick was a luxury reserved for publicly-owned buildings and the homes of the wealthy, and the pot-bellied stoves and drafty flus that served to heat Lawrenceburg’s early frame buildings often spawned uncontrollable flames that could engulf entire blocks in a matter of a few minutes. The problem was exacerbated by a chronic lack of fire insurance and the total absence of a fire department.

In those days, the city relied on the old method of ringing church bells and shouting for the men of the city to bring their buckets and come running to drown out the flames of housefires.

That all changed in 1898.

On October 6, 1898, the worst fire in Lawrenceburg’s history leveled a huge area of downtown. The blaze burned through homes and businesses almost unchallenged as the people of the city almost-helplessly scurried about with buckets, trying to find ladders and struggling on rooftops to beat flames back with sheets and pillowcases and feed sacks.

When the smoke finally cleared, more than half of the businesses in Lawrenceburg had been destroyed and a good many houses, too. On top of that, merchants lost a great deal of their salvaged inventory to looting as it sat in the street overnight. All told, more than $75,000 in damage was done, only $9,000 of which was covered by insurance. In today’s money, that would be the equivalent of losing $2.1 million in property and carrying only $260,000 in insurance. Although there were no serious injuries suffered during the fire, the financial loss was devastating, and—as though a giant meteor had slammed into the earth at the spot—the flames had carved out a ragged, smoking cavity in the center of the city’s commercial district.

The cause of the fire, while never officially determined, was said by the Florence Times to have been an errant cigarette, tossed to the wrong place at the wrong time in the middle of that October night.

Practically all of the buildings on the northeastern corner of the Square had been reduced to ashes when the sun rose on October 7, as well as most of the buildings between the northern end of the Square and Gaines Street. The people of Lawrenceburg decided three things in the immediate aftermath of the fire: the city needed a professional fire department, cisterns must be dug to the north and the south of the courthouse, and the buildings of the Square needed to be built of brick, when at all possible.

Although we can’t be sure exactly when it was built, the old White’s Department Store, also known as the Gibbs-Belew building on the northern end of the Square in Lawrenceburg, was probably one of the first brick structures to arise from the ashes of that terrible fire. We know for sure that the old pre-fire saloon and pool hall had been destroyed by the fire—one of three such saloons lost to the flames. In an 1899 insurance map of Lawrenceburg drawn by the Sanborn Company, the lot was vacant.

We know that the current brick building was built sometime between 1899 and 1903. By late 1903, according to newspaper advertisements, a grocery store known as Gibbs and Belew’s Grocery had set up shop on the premises, and the store would soon lend its name to the name of the building, itself.

In the meantime, the city went to work with great haste to secure the equipment needed to form a volunteer fire company. Tall ladders were purchased, and local businessmen were charged with the duty of determining the cost of a mobile fire pump and a huge alarm bell to be hung over the courthouse. These preparations were the birth of the Lawrenceburg Fire Department, which is now in its 118th year.

The Gibbs-Belew building and the structures rebuilt around it would prove the wisdom of these fire preparations soon after they were made. On the night of August 10, 1904, a trash fire began on the back steps of the neighboring Simms Grocery, and spread soon to the First National Bank and then to the Gibbs-Belew building.

This fire, however, ended much differently than the one in 1898.
Soon after the flames were spotted, the fire department was alerted. In a little over two hours, the flames had been extinguished. According to the Lawrence Democrat, disaster was averted because “the pump, manned by willing hands, kept steady streams of water playing upon the fire, and paid for itself many times over…the wisdom of keeping the cistern in front of the court house filled with water was never better shown.”

Three different buildings in that corner of the Square were damaged by that fire, but none were destroyed, owing in part to their brick construction. The 1904 fire did about $3,000 worth of damage, all of which was covered by insurance. The Gibbs-Belew building suffered minor fire and water damage, but was nonetheless intact when the flames were extinguished. The paper gives special praise to the Lawrenceburg Fire Department, saying, “a serious calamity was but narrowly averted by the equipment, cool courage and promptness of our fire laddies, who deserve the thanks of our people.”

The Gibbs-Belew building suffered much more extensive damage in a fire on July 18, 1909. Early that morning, flames were seen coming through a skylight in the center of the building. At that time, Gibbs & Belew’s Grocery in the eastern half of the ground-level had recently been transformed into the Two Johns Theater.

Since the 1909 fire, the building has served a number of purposes. The second floor was office space for several local attorneys in the early-20th century. Some readers may remember it as the home of Arlo Peppers’s grocery in the mid-20th century, but practically all of us recall the not-too-distant past when it was White’s Department Store.

In November 2015, the property was purchased by Mr. Blake Grooms. The second floor and façade are currently undergoing an extensive renovation process. The ground level is home to JB tumble, a business owned by Jon and Jamie Hyatt-Brewer. Mrs. Hyatt-Brewer teaches tumble and cheer there to many young people of our area, a field in which she has 28 years of experience, including more than 17 years as an instructor.

Also fitting for this building which has risen from the ashes so many times is that Jamie’s husband Jon Brewer serves as a fireman in the Lawrenceburg Fire Department.