The Windsor Hotel was located at 575 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, New York. The seven-story hotel opened in 1873, at a time when hotel residency was becoming popular with the wealthy, and was advertised as "the most comfortable and homelike hotel in New York. On St Patrick's Day 1899, while people were gathered below to watch the parade, a fire destroyed the hotel within 90 minutes. The fire supposedly started when someone threw an unextinguished match out of a second-floor window and the wind blew it against the lace curtains. Firemen, some of them still in their dress uniforms from the parade, made heroic rescues, but they were hampered by the crowds, the fire moved too fast for them to reach every window with ladders, and water pressure was inadequate. Almost 90 people died (estimates vary), with numerous bodies landing on the pavement. Some fell when escape ropes burned their hands, while others jumped in preference to being burned alive. The fire chief, Hugh Bonner, blamed the construction of the hotel for the rapid spread of the fire.