A Low Green Sign for the Molasses Flood

Set low into a stone wall where Copp's Hill Terrace meets Commercial Street, a small green plaque is easy to walk past. It marks one of the strangest disasters in the city's history. Just after noon on January 15, 1919, a steel tank holding more than two million gallons of molasses split open on this stretch of the waterfront. The tank belonged to the Purity Distilling Company, a subsidiary of United States Industrial Alcohol, and the molasses was bound for making industrial alcohol. A brown wave, estimated at up to 25 feet high and moving at about 35 miles an hour, crossed Commercial Street, broke buildings and bent the girders of the elevated railway. Twenty-one people died and around 150 were injured. After years of hearings, a court-appointed auditor found the company responsible, ruling that the tank had not been strong enough for its load. North End residents said for decades afterward that on hot summer days, the neighborhood still smelled faintly of molasses.