The summer of 1891 in Glen Ellyn was especially hot and dry. The drought persisted into autumn. John Elick, a local baker, had the job of lighting the kerosene street lamps along Main Street. On the evening of November 6, as he lit the lamp in front of his bakery, it slipped from his grasp and crashed in flames on the wooden sidewalk. Within seconds the blaze was beyond what could be smothered with overcoats or a nearby bucket of water, and it quickly spread to Elick’s own building, a wood frame store front.
In those days Glen Ellyn had no fire company of its own. Furthermore, it had no municipal water system to supply water for fighting a fire. The fire started on the west side of Main Street one building north of Crescent Boulevard. As was the case with the great Chicago fire of 1871, strong southerly winds pushed the fire north — toward Pennsylvania Avenue. Boyd Brothers Hardware Store was the next victim, followed by the office building of G.M.H. Wagner, the drug store of W.S. Ryder, the grocery store of John Mertz and the W.H. Myers Meat Market. The fire burned all night until it had consumed every building on the west side of Main except for one that was just south of where the fire started. In 1891, this constituted most of the commercial buildings in Glen Ellyn.
While the few buildings on the east side of Main were spared destruction, several suffered blistered paint and charred wood in places.
