Around 11:45 pm on March 9, 1941, theater manager Frank Clements locked up the building. Around 12:45 am, members of the Shoe City Club noticed smoke coming from the building and notified its caretaker, Horace Spencer. Spencer sounded the first alarm at 12:45 am and the second was sounded five minutes later. The fire started in the basement, but around 1:20 am it spread into the balcony, which led Chief Frank F. Dickinson to order a general alarm.[3] According to investigators, the heat of the fire distorted steel trusses above the ceiling, which pushed the brick walls of the theater back and caused the roof to collapse.[1] The collapse occurred around 1:50 am while four crews were inside fighting the fire.[3] 12 firefighters were killed in the collapse and a thirteenth died in the Brockton Hospital two days later.[4] The cause of the fire was never determined. A small anthracite coal memorial built by a firefighter from Scranton, Pennsylvania was placed in Brockton City Hall. In 2008 a 10-foot bronze statue of a firefighter kneeling in grief with the names of the 13 men killed in the fire engraved on a base was placed in City Hall Plaza.[1]
