The Burns Brothers created the “New Little Beauty Wagon” in the late 1800s for rural carriers. The company’s full name was “W.E. Burns and Bros. Carriage Works” and the carriage factory occupied a large part of the 600 block of Green Street on the 1899 Sanborn Insurance Map. It had been located in the Empire Shops at the intersection of Water and Erie Streets during the 1880s and 1890s. The company was established and managed by Walter Elsworth Burns (1865-1943). Walter’s brothers Reese Norris (1870-1946), Alfred G. (1872-1965), Charles Brittingham "C.B." (1879-1968), and Jonathan Isaac Burns (1868-1942) joined the company over the next decade. The five brothers left an indelible mark on the history of Havre de Grace through their various activities, including manufacturing carriages and automobiles, serving on the City Council and other administrative roles, buying and selling property, and building unique formstone houses.

The Burns brothers manufactured and sold carriages here from 1896 through the first decade of the 20th century. They then used their shop at Water and Erie Streets for repairs. The factory is credited with building the first US mail wagon and the local fire company’s hand- and horse-drawn vehicles. An 1880 carriage, the “Stanhope Trap” model, built by the Burns Brothers, can be seen today in the Marvel Museum in Georgetown, Delaware. Their four-story factory was directly across Green Street from the Hecht Hotel. The brothers also were sports enthusiasts; they financed a local bowling club in 1906 and also sponsored the local baseball team known as the Burns Brothers “Runabouts.”

The factory suffered a major fire in 1902, the same year the Susquehanna Hose Company was founded. The hose company succeeded in saving the Hecht Hotel but the factory and the nearby Reynolds Brothers Canning Factory and warehouse, containing 2,000,000 tin cans in storage, were destroyed. The carriage factory was rebuilt but, like a number of other carriage companies, the Burns Brothers soon turned to the promise of automobiles. There is a photo that shows Isaac Hecht sitting on the right of the photo with Walter Burns in an automobile donated by Isaac Hecht for a raffle held by the Fraternal Order of Eagles in Havre de Grace. The photo was taken in 1910 outside the Burns Brothers Carriage Factory. Not being very successful with autos either, however, the Burns Brothers decided to discontinue automobiles in 1912.

In 1918 the factory building was converted into an apartment house with 40 families and a manager. A small convenience store operated on the first floor and former residents recall that a lady on the first floor did laundry for them. Kids who lived there, however, remember a candy shop in the basement.

On the icy night of December 25, 1968, a massive 14-alarm fire destroyed the huge apartment house, causing the death of one tenant and displacement of all the families. People remember the sky being lit up and black smoke blanketing the city. Michelle Lynch-Gartner says their back yard was covered in ash that her mother called “black snow.” Ed Strong says Captain James Pappas of the Salvation Army was there serving hot coffee to victims and firefighters but fell on the ice and broke his arm. His wife was in Larry Sampson’s house making sandwiches. And Michelle Lynch-Owen remembers how scary it was to see hot embers falling in her yard on Stokes Street as she watched the fire from her bedroom window. Amy Carroll May, born that day, was oblivious to the fact that her father, Johnny Carroll, was in the new snorkel truck basket when the power lines fell and the window blew out knocking him and another fireman down. Alonzo Walker remembers when the basket fell and says everyone was terrified that he had been killed. Fortunately, he lived to tell Amy about it later.

Virginia Forwood Pate Wetter was born in one of the Burns apartments in 1919. Her mother was Bennita Charshee (1898-1993) who married Walter F. Forwood (1897-1969) in 1918, who was in the automobile business. They used to go across Green Street to Hecht’s Hotel for Sunday dinners until they moved to South Washington Street. Virginia Pate Wetter later became President of the Chesapeake Broadcasting Company. She lived in Havre de Grace and recalled the day in 1968 when her mother called and told her, “Your birthplace burned down.”

Ermalee Hall McCauley recalls living on the fourth floor in 1946 and 1947, which was difficult because she had to walk up all the stairs and she was pregnant. They had only an “ice box” in their $35 a month two-bedroom apartment so she said it didn’t take them long to find a used refrigerator. She remembers that, being just after the end of WWII, it was difficult to find available apartments. In the late 1950s, Pat Vincenti and his mother, Bernadine Vincenti also rented an apartment on the fourth floor. And Ham Channell lived in the apartments from 1960 to 1964, just before Frederick and Clara Warden had their daughter, Nadine Warden (Burns), and lived here until the fire. Ruth Racey-Courtney’s recollection of living there is the most unnerving—it’s where she tried to put her brother down the garbage chute!

The lot on which these buildings existed is still empty and has never been built on again.