Torch Bearer
This article originally appeared in Design Times, December 1993
Calm and bespectacled, Dr. Edward V. Clougherty strikes a safety match and lights his propane torch. Out comes a blue pin of flame at 3092 Fahrenheit. He shakes out the match and sets it down on the counter. Hoisting a big, shopworn pair of chemist's tongs, he plucks out a bright yellow swatch of fabric out of a small pile of fabrics by his side, and holds the cloth out to within a hair's breadth of the flame. Whoosh - up it goes in flames, just like that. Clougherty stands there, watching, unperturbed. "Look at that glow ..." he says; "that means cotton."
For Clougherty, this little procedure is strictly routine - something he's done thousands of times by now. It is one of his smaller duties as Chief Chemist for the Boston Fire Department: testing manufacturers' fabric samples for flammability. But for the hapless designer whose contract is hanging by the threads of that fabric, this is literally a trial by fire.
Ever since the Boston Fire Department began regulating the fire safety of upholstered furnishings in public areas in 1979, Clougherty has been the architect and enforcer of the strictest public-area fire codes in the country.-h -·Boston's famously finicky codes, long the bane of manufacturers and the envy of other big-city fire departments, have helped set a precedent for a system of uniform protocols now gaining favor nationwide. Now, more and more states are beginning to follow Boston's lead in mandating fire-testing for commercial furnishings in public areas. And Clougherty finds himself lately thrust into the limelight.
To fire fighters and safety advocates nationwide, Clougherty is a recognized leader in the fight for uniform standards. A PhD chemist and veteran of thirty years with the Boston Fire Department, he is considered in many circles the authority on public-area fire safety regulation.
To many local designers, however, Clougherty remains something of an enigma - despite his own best efforts at making himself known." A lot of people still see Ed Clougherty as this kind of boogie-man," says one local manufacturers' representative; "but once you get to know him personally he's actually a very sweet guy."
Clougherty tries to involve himself in industry activities, participating in workshops, seminars, and trade group meetings. But Clougherty has more on his schedule than hobnobbing with local designers. In fact, the enforcement of furnishings regulations account for only a small portion of his daily business.
So it comes as small surprise that to many designers, Clougherty remains an unseen force, the voice of judgment lurking-h - somewhere beyond the reams of rules and regulations. As for Clougherty himself, he believes that the business of preventing fires takes precedence over working the social circuit. "I take this job very seriously," he says; "this is one arena where there is no room for compromise."
Boston Fire Department Headquarters occupy an old, stolid-looking concrete building on Southampton st., deep in the heart of Southie's warehouse district.
Clougherty's office is tucked away in an anonymous back corner of the first-floor hallway. Inside, it looks like an undistinguished, standard-issue city bureaucrat's cubby hole. An abandoned typewriter sits near the doorway, below an assortment of pictures of men in Department uniform. A cluttered assortment of official forms and memos carpets Clougherty's desk. It is a practical, wholly unremarkable-looking place. Except for one thing. Standing against the left wall of the office, just a few feet from the window, sits this enormous, implausible-looking yellow machine. It is about six feet tall, four feet across, with an assortment of knobs and dials ranging across the front. Housed in the middle of this great hulking piece of machinery is a single hollowed-out cabinet, with gray walls and char burns all over its inside. This is the "Oven," where Clougherty performs his fabric tests. A fireproof furnishing if ever there was one.
Clougherty has occupied this office for over thirty years now. "This place is like a home to me," he says.-h -· Fifty years ago, the position of Chief Chemist did not exist in the Boston Fire Department. There is a story behind the position - and behind the man who now holds out - that sheds an interesting light on Clougherty's present preoccupations with public-area fire-safety codes.
It all started on a Saturday night, November 28, 1942. At the corner of Shawmut and Broadway streets, the night was just starting to swing for several hundred revelers at Boston's famed nightspot of the moment: the Cocoanut Grove.
It was a little after 10 pm that night when an underaged busboy named Stanley Tomaszewski lit a match just a whisker too close to one of the club's trademark artificial palm trees. Noone noticed the tree catching fire; by the time anyone realized what was happening, flames had spread to the ceiling and ignited the blue satin ceiling fabric overhead. Within twelve minutes, the Cocoanut Grove was ablaze. That night, 490 people died.
It was the worst such fire ever recorded. Subsequent investigations revealed that a Boston Fire Department inspector had checked out the restaurant just days before the blaze occurred; he had declared it perfectly fire-safe.
The City of Boston acted immediately, taking drastic steps to ensure that such a tragedy would never happen again. Within a year, the City ceded full authority to its Fire Department to set - and enforce - public-area fire safety codes that would set a standard for such regulations nationwide. To make sure the codes worked, the City also authorized the creation of a new-h - position within the Department: Chief Chemist.
When the Cocoanut Grove fire broke, Coleman Clougherty Jr. was a Captain on the force. He had recently risen into the administrative ranks after putting in some twenty years of service as a rank-and-file fire fighter. For years, he had been clocking 84-hour weeks, battling fires and waiting around at the station house while he tried to earn a decent living for his family.
Coleman Jr. was himself the son of a fire fighter. His father, Coleman Sr., joined the Department around the turn of the century, retiring at the rank of Lieutenant in 1920. Coleman Sr. had three sons: John, Robert, and Coleman Jr. They all grew up to follow their father onto the force. Robert died in action in 1963. John became Chief of the Department. Coleman Jr. went on to become Deputy Chief.
In 1961, 19 years after Cocoanut Grove, Coleman's son Edward, recently out of the Army and holding a Master's in Chemistry from Boston University, came onto the force as an assistant to the Chief Chemist.
"The Boston Fire Department is a lot like a family," he says; "this is a place where traditions run quite strong."
While working on the force, Clougherty earned his PhD from B.U. in 1966. During the early years, he brought his scientific training to bear on a number of fire-safety issues. In 1967, he helped design the first fire-resistant fire fighters' outfits in-h - the country (he recently finished working on his twenty-eighth new design for the suit). He has also worked at various times an any number of fire-related chemical issues, from revising regulations for transporting hazardous materials to participating in research programs on thermal combustion with the Harvard School of Public Health.
It was in 1979 that Clougherty first started making waves in the interior design community. That year, Clougherty helped prompt the Department to revise its fire codes regulating public occupancy buildings.
When Clougherty first proposed regulating the fire resistance of upholstered furnishings, many designers and manufacturers found themselves taken by surprise. "A lot of us were horrified," recalls Elizabeth Shapiro, now president of the Institute of Business Designers, an organization for local contract designers; "noone was prepared for anything like this."
No fire department had ever tried to impose such restrictions before. And few manufacturers were ready for the kind of heated scrutiny that Clougherty was about to start administering.
"I remember most manufacturers had no idea what they were in for," says Anne Dalton, a designer with BKM Boston. Before long, Clougherty was hard at work enforcing the codes. He was lighting up his first fabric samples, setting fire to whole chairs, anything to make sure the new codes worked. And soon enough, he was sending many designers back to the-h - meeting room.
At the time, Clougherty was virtually unknown in the design community. Suddenly, one day there he was: issuing edicts to the whole industry.
"I remember it was a hassle, especially at first," says Kathy Jenkins, a manufacturers' representative with Jenkins Associates. "There was one contract we worked on that took three years to get approval. There was nothing we could do about it; it just had to wait."
As designers and manufacturers resigned themselves to dealing with the code, compliance went up and complaints eventually went down.
Over the coming years, Boston's fire codes began to gain a national reputation as a benchmark for furniture safety. "Those codes set a national standard," says Shapiro; "In fact the phrase 'Meets Boston Code' has caught on as a real advertising hook." Indeed it did. The phrase turns up regularly in manufacturers' sales pitches and trade advertisements. And more than one manufacturer has been known to use the phrase in vain. "I've seen some advertisements where the manufacturer claimed that such-and-such a product 'Meets Boston Code," says Clougherty; "but when a designer calls me up to verify that, sometimes I just have to tell them: 'I'm sorry, but that's advertising."
The temptation is understandable: the codes are notoriously tough and highly esteemed in industry circles. There's no question that, as Jenkins put it, "Clougherty can be a very hard case."
That is one point on which everyone - Clougherty included - can agree. The question he still faces, even today, is: How much is too much? Are the codes too extreme? "A lot of people tell me they think these codes go too far," he says; "they tell me that there haven't been any public fires big enough to justify them. Well, to that I say: I'm not willing to wait for ten more people to die in a fire before we start getting tough."
Clougherty is hoping that his critics will soften up now that Boston has started moving towards uniform standards. The new testing protocols, based on controlled test methods now available to manufacturers nationwide, should make it easier for designers to comply with the Boston codes.
"Life is going to get easier for everyone," says Clougherty. "With the old standards, a product was either a 1 or a 10. Now we have enough different measurements available to rate products all the way up and down the scale. It's just a question of deciding where to draw the line."
