First amateur to win Pulitzer buried on the anniversary of his prize-winning photo. Called “defining image” of deadliest hotel fire in North America.
The famous picture above was taken 61 years ago this morning. It shows Daisy McCumber jumping from the burning Winecoff Hotel in Atlanta. The person who took this photo was the first amateur to win the Pulitzer Prize. Arnold Hardy died Wednesday at age 85.
The 3:00 AM fire killed 119 people in a building that had been billed as “absolutely fireproof”. Daisy McCumber survived.
Then 24-years-old, Arnold Hardy was a Georgia Tech graduate student. Here is some of what the Atlanta Journal-Constitution wrote in its obituary of Hardy:
On that fateful Saturday, he returned to his Midtown rooming house about 3 a.m. after a date. He heard sirens screaming, called the fire department to get the location, grabbed his camera and headed to the Peachtree Street hotel where 280 guests were registered.
He had five flashbulbs, four after one of them burst from the cold. He took three pictures. Then, with his final flash bulb, he trained his lens on the mezzanine where bodies were bouncing on the awning and striking the marquee. He noticed a woman who was trying to climb down a rope and lost her grip, the article said.
Mr. Hardy captured her fall, her dress flying above her head and her white underpants stark against the hotel. He developed his film at Tech, and it was about 6 a.m. when he saw the image of the woman in free fall. He called AP and sold the picture for $300.
Mr. Hardy continued his freelance photography until an industrial fire led him to retire his press card. “I went out there and hung around a while; there wasn’t anything worth shooting,” he said. “But the next day my picture appeared in the paper with some caption about the Winecoff photographer looking for another prize.” Mr. Hardy did not want people to think of him as some kind of ambulance-chaser.
Hardy turned down a job with the AP. His picture taking from then on concentrated on family and personal photos. Hardy’s funeral was held today, on the anniversary of the deadliest hotel fire in U.S. history.
The fifteen story Winecoff was built in 1913, then Atlanta’s tallest hotel. Here are some excerpts from the site WinecoffHotelFire.com about the design of the hotel and the firefighting efforts:
One of the most critical factors contributing to this staggering loss of life was the design of the building itself. Based on “European” design, the hotel was a perfect square with the stairwell and elevator shafts running straight through the middle. Thin wooden doors leading to the stairwells had been left open on several floors as well as many transoms above guest rooms allowing smoke and flames to be pulled upward like a giant chimney. When the only means of egress became impassable, guests were forced to the windows of their rooms, where they were met with precious few choices. Many fashioned sheet ropes, while others doused their rooms and themselves with toilet and bath water. Others simply awaited their fates in hopeless silence.
By the time fire trucks arrived, many guests were already on the verge of jumping and many lept to their deaths moments before ladders reached their windows. Fear had reached such a fevered pitch that panic-strickened guests became desperate, and nothing short of a human rain shower ensued. Several firefighters fell to their deaths or were injured after being knocked off their ladders by falling bodies. Mothers hurled their babies from windows only to follow them to their deaths.
Rescue efforts were further hindered by the geographic location of the building. The Mortgage Guarantee Building sat opposite the hotel with only about six feet of alley between them. This prevented any kind of rescue from the firetrucks.
More links:
December 7, 2000, Firehouse.com article on the cause of the fire
