Hotel Vendome fire

The Hotel Vendome was on the southwest corner of the intersection of Commonwealth Avenue and Dartmouth Street, in the Back Bay area of Boston.

The new owners opened a restaurant called Cafe Vendome on the first floor[3] and began renovating the remaining hotel into apartments[4] and a shopping mall.

At 5:28 p.m., without warning, all five floors of a 40-by-45-foot (12 m × 14 m) section at the southeast corner of the building collapsed, burying Ladder 15 and 17 firefighters beneath a two-story pile of debris.

Although the cause of the original fire was not known, the subsequent collapse was attributed to the failure of an overloaded 7-inch (18 cm) steel column whose support had been weakened when a new duct had been cut beneath it, triggered by the weight of the firefighters and their equipment on the upper floors.

The monument, designed by Cambridge sculptor Ted Clausen, features a fireman's helmet and coat cast in bronze draped over a low arc of dark granite.