Fire damages Morrison Coffee plant — San Antonio Light, 13 Aug 1913
Fire reporting at 214 South Comal on the Morrison Coffee Company plant — stock and building losses with surrounding briefs. Useful alongside Hoffmann-Hayman factory history as period evidence of how San Antonio’s coffee houses were covered when flames broke out.
Transcription
FIRE DAMAGES TEA AND COFFEE PLANT
Lighted Cigar Stump Thought to Have Been Cause—Another Blaze in Brackenridge Park.
Fire Chief Wright believed a lighted cigar stump thrown into a pressed paper cuspidor filled with sawdust smoldered from about 5:00 p.m. the prior afternoon until flames broke out around 1:20 a.m. at the Morrison Coffee Company plant, 214 South Comal Street.
About $3,000 in coffee, tea, and spices was destroyed; building damage was estimated at $300. Firemen saved equipment in the coffee storage house and machinery in the roaster room valued at about $10,000. The building was described as a story-and-a-half ironclad structure owned by Fest & Trawalter, valued at $1,200 (insured $800); stock insurance $8,000.
(Additional briefs on the same page cover a Brackenridge Park fire, a tar pot incident, and a motor apparatus mishap — see full page image.)
Source
- San Antonio Light (San Antonio, Texas), Wednesday 13 August 1913, p. 12, “Fire Damages Tea and Coffee Plant.”
- Digital clip: Newspapers.com image 1257886634 (accessed 3 May 2026).
- Archived PDF: /assets/pdfs/1913-08-13-san-antonio-light-fire-tea-coffee-plant.pdf.
- Gallery: Newspaper Clippings (
HH-CLIP-1913-0005).
