A Williams Street home is show abalze during the historic Crown Hill fire.

Nashuans, like most New Englanders, were enjoying the warmer-than-normal April weather that was expected to continue into May.

The turnout was robust at the Saturday night dance at the Community Hall that April 26, where for 50 cents one could move to the beat of the Wonder Boys Orchestra.

A couple mornings later, George Morse, of 71 Harbor Avenue, got up early for work at Producer’s Dairy. On the way out he spotted a light in the “heel shop” just up the street. Discovering a fire, Morse turned in an alarm, likely preventing the shop’s demise, because “the wind was blowing considerably at the time.”

Up on Gillis Street, a dozen of John Tagney’s friends helped him celebrate his 5th birthday at his family’s home.

Over at Memorial Hospital, Mr. and Mrs. Earl Schofield, residents of Williams Street, welcomed a daughter.

Newbury Street was hit hard during the Crown Hill fire on May 4, 1930. The estimated loss was at more than $2 million.

Those who knew longtime Crown Hill resident Leona Lazott Rollins were pleased to hear she was “progressing well” after surgery.

Toward week’s end, hard working motorman James Glynn, after checking the weather forecast, perhaps in The Nashua Telegraph, decided to take next week off “for a little vacation.”

Assuming motorman Glynn left town for vacation, he would miss what was about to come to the unsuspecting Nashuans who called the tight-knit Crown Hill neighborhood home.

Miss Anna Ryan, who lived on Allds Street, also missed it; she had just left for Pauling, New York to house-sit her sister’s home.

Thousands of other Nashuans, however, did not miss a thing. Many probably wished they had; others may have been grateful they were home with their families, able to keep everyone safe as the unwelcome visitor roared in on the stiff, dry wind the weathermen had predicted for that sunny, warm Sunday, May 4, 1930.

The Holy Infant Jesus School on Allds Street – the home of 200-plus students – burned in the Crown Hill fire.

Monday marks the 90th anniversary of the great Crown Hill Fire, the opening act in Nashua’s so-called “disaster decade” that was followed by the Flood of 1936 and two years later, the so-called “once in a lifetime storm,” the Great 1938 Hurricane.

The conflagration, it was learned, was birthed by a tiny flicker of flame under the railroad trestle and footbridge that spanned the Nashua River connecting Canal and Temple streets.

The first alarm was sounded at just about 2 p.m., but the little flicker, feeding on the dryness and whipped by the wind, was out of hand before the trucks from Central Station, just a couple hundred yards away, even got there.

By nightfall, much of Crown Hill had been reduced to charred embers and ash, leaving stunned residents trying to figure out where to go, what to do from there.

Suddenly, but only briefly, Crown Hill became a tourist destination, an unexpected side-effect of the disaster that Nashuans, by all accounts, handled quite well.

Monday marks the 90th anniversary of the great Crown Hill Fire, the opening act in Nashua’s so-called ‘disaster decade.’

A week after the blaze, on Sunday, May 11, the curious motored from as far away as New York and New Jersey to see for themselves the vast destruction they’d only read about in the newspapers.

An idea was floated, but promptly nixed, to rope off the area, set up one entrance and one exit, and charge visitors by the car to view the ruins.

Instead, volunteers set up signs with arrows and willingly directed traffic, a Telegraph reporter wrote. The Red Cross set up a couple of donation stations, and found many visitors to be at least fairly generous to Nashuans in need.

The reporter apparently took the tour himself, comparing what he saw to “Kenmore Corner (now Square) out in the Back Bay right after a World Series game, or Hampton Beach Boulevard on a fair Sunday in summer.”

A mix of chauffer-driven rich folks and young families in their humble Fords and Chevys paraded through Crown Hill, the reporter wrote.

The Nashua Telegraph put out an Extra on the day of the fire, May 4, 1930.

Here’s how another Telegraph reporter described the fire in an essay penned on the 20th anniversary on May 4, 1950.

“Central fire station apparatus and crew rolling down Temple Street, fire cracking and smoke spiraling from the under timbers of the tinder-dry B&M railroad bridge.”

The “mounting flames were broken up into sparks flying high … seeding innumerable fresh fires … general alarm followed general alarm as the fire front pushed wider and further … .”

Firefighters’ faces “grew grimmer … and grimier … the shifting wind directed, and redirected, the course of the flames, spreading panic in the hearts of an entire city … neighbor aided neighbor in removing household goods to safety … only to have their neighbors’ homes spared, and their own homes consumed.”

Dean Shalhoup’s column appears weekly in The Sunday Telegraph. He may be reached at 594-1256 or dshalhoup@nashuatelegraph.com.