Other Fiction Smith, Francis Hopkinson: The Wood Fire in No. 3. v1. 8 Aug 2014

[crutledge]

Francis Hopkinson Smith (October 23, 1838 – April 7, 1915) was a United States author, artist and engineer. He built the foundation for the Statue of Liberty, wrote many famous stories and received awards for his paintings.

Excerpt
There was no chimney in No. 3 when he moved in—no place really to put one, unless he knocked a hole in the roof, started a fire on the bare floor, and sat around it wigwam fashion; nor was there any way of supporting the necessary brickwork, unless a start was made from the basement up through every room to No. 3 and so on to the roof. But trifling obstacles like these never daunted MacWhirter. Lonnegan, a Beaux Arts man, who built the big Opera House, and who also hungered for blazing logs, solved the difficulty. It was only a matter of fifteen feet from where Mac’s easel stood to the roof of the building that sheltered him, and it was not many days before Lonnegan’s foreman had a hole in the roof and a wide and spacious chimney breast rising from Mac’s floor, which filled the opening in the ceiling and rose some ten feet above it, the whole resting on an iron plate bolted to four upright iron rods which were in turn bolted to two heavy timbers laid flat on the roof. Lonnegan’s men did the work, and Lonnegan settled with the landlord and forgot ever afterward to send Mac the bill, and hasn’t to this day.

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