1891 State Normal School at Cheney fire

The 1891 State Normal School at Cheney fire was a conflagration on the morning of August 27, 1891, that consumed the only building then housing the State Normal School at Cheney in Cheney, Washington. No lives were lost, but the destruction of the building sparked a multi-year battle with the governor and state legislature regarding whether the normal school would be shuttered, or whether the state would authorize funds for the construction of a replacement building.

At the time of the fire, the institution originally known as the Benjamin P. Cheney Academy had only been in place for nine years, operating for most of those years as a school for local children. The campus's original building, built in the fall of 1881, was a wooden structure, meauring 36' by 66'; by August 1891, the school (renamed the State Normal School at Cheney shortly after Washington became a state in 1889) was constructing an addition of four classrooms and a gymnasium to accommodate rising enrollment and the needs of the new normal school curriculum.

The town around the campus, Cheney, Washington, has been described by historians as a "tough little town," and "the last camping-ground of the American frontier." It was home to speculators and opportunists, like most other frontier towns at the time.

Early on the morning of August 27, 1891 (at around 12:45am), just one week before the fall term was scheduled to begin, the Cheney fire department responded to a blaze at the State Normal School. According to the Spokane Daily Chronicle, fire officials believed the fire began when a leaking hydrant soaked a pile of lime next to the building, where new construction at the building site was underway. J. Orin Oliphant, writing the institution's first published history in 1924, cited the reminiscences of a Cheney resident in claiming that "the fire started on the northeast side, in a heated mortar bed, which was too close to the wooden basement wall." According to the Chronicle, the fire department arrived on the scene almost immediately, but the flames consumed the building so quickly that "the efforts of the firemen were useless."

The building, then valued at $10,000, burned to the ground as a total loss. It had contained a large number of new books and materials, along with a brand new piano, that had just been acquired for the upcoming school year. Since the structure had contained the entire institution, the school had to make arrangements to resume classes in another building while the state debated an appropriation to rebuild. The university had an insurance policy on the building, but the policy had been made payable to the Washington State Legislature instead of to the school itself. This left the university in limbo without any funding to rebuild.

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