Fall of a Church Steeple in New Haven.
--‘On Saturday evening a very severe gale of wind, accompanied by rain, came upon us from the northeast, and raged with great fury for several hours.
At about 8 o'clock the tall and slender spire of the
Wooster place Baptist Church was blown over, with a crash which was heard half a mile or more to the leeward, and yet the gale was so strong that it was not heard in the rear lecture room of the church to which the steeple belonged.
The spire is about 235 or 240 feet high, and has long been the terror of the neighbors, who feared some such catastrophe.
Fortunately the wind was just in the right direction to send it clear of the neighboring houses, and it fell in precisely the spot in which it could do the least injury.
It fell across the street, and on to Wooster square, coming down with a force which mashed the timbers like pipe stems, and broke the lighter wood-work up into innumerable splinters and fragments.
A young tree which stood in the track of its fall was stripped of every branch, as if with a hatchet, and its upright trunk stands amid the ruins as smooth as if trimmed by hand.
Aside from crushing two lengths of the iron fence of the
Green, this was all the damage except to the church itself.
The tower of the church is of brick, twenty inches thick, and the timbers of the spire were carried down into the tower about twenty feet, to a level with the roof only.
It was at the base of this frame that the break occurred, the front wall being thrown out by the spire, which carried with it the gable end and front of the portico, and three of the pillars which supported it, but doing no further damage to the body of the church than breaking a few panes of glass.
The bell fell with the tower, and the top of it was broken off. The cupola of the
City Hotel was also blown down by the gale.--’
New Haven Journal, Nov. 5.