Introduction and Explanation of the Intensity of the Great Fire

One Sunday night, in Chicago City around approximately 9 p.m., a small fire started by a small shed, having been ignited, and soon turned into one of the most memorable and unforgettable moments in America’s devastating disasters. What would have been thought of as a small fire soon spread throughout the city eventually covering about four square miles and killing hundreds of Chicago’s citizens. This was recorded as one of the first great fires that destroyed a large amount of the city, but was surely not the last. Although Chicago recovered from the event, developing one of the country’s most well-known fire fighting sources, Baltimore’s leaders did not follow the same precautions that Chicago’s leaders had done, after the Great Chicago Fire. A little over thirty years later Baltimore experienced a much related disaster, also due to a small fire. In the previous centuries, cities experienced being at very high risks for spreading fires, mostly due to close living arrangements, the overuse of lumber for building, and the lack of enforcing strict fire codes. It is speculated that the Great Baltimore Fire of 1904 could have been easily avoided by having better firefighting equipment and better chosen procedures, but the fire was so unstoppable that the Maryland National Guard became involved in the fight to stop the flames from spreading further. The thirty hour catastrophe caused the city to suffer extremely from unemployment and financial losses, but within the following rebuilding of the city grew a story of success. The question is, “Was the success of the city after the fire worth the damage that it had caused Baltimore’s citizens physically and emotionally?”, but before I go into detail about the story of success I must tell story of the progression of the great catastrophe. This will get all of you blog readers to understand the full extent of how inescapable the fire had became.



On the morning of Sunday, February 7th, 1904, Baltimore’s fire department was currently preparing for an inspection scheduled for 11:00 a.m. of that date, but soon received orders, by an automatic alarm, to arrive at the John E. Hurst Building, between Hopkins Place and German Street. Engine 15 and Truck 2 arrived to the scene discovering, what they believed, to have been a small fire. Rumor has it that the blaze ignited by a Baltimore citizen, who dropped a lit cigarette or cigar through an opening of a cracked, glass window, leading to the basement of the building. At around 11:10 a.m. the entire Baltimore City Fire Department was called to prevent the spreading of the blaze, but a devastating happening occurred. Since the fire had started in the basement of the building, it had spread to the base of the elevator shaft and moved up along the shaft causing an immediate combustion of almost the entire building. The enormous explosion blew off the entire roof of the building and all of its windows, which landed into other surrounding buildings. Somewhat around noon, the help of the Washington D.C. Fire Department was then requested.

I found this photograph, shown above, with many others on the Maryland Digital Cultural Heritage Project, via web, from the Enoch Pratt Free Library. This image was taken seconds after the explosion happened in the John E. Hurst Building.

Upon the arriving of the D.C. Fire Department came another crisis. They soon discovered that the hose couplings that the near fire department came to the rescue with did not fit the fire hydrants of Baltimore City, which was not unusual for the D.C. Department to obtain. According to Wikipedia- the free encyclopedia, by 1903, there were over 600 sizes and variations of the fire hose couplings in the United States. The fire hoses were then attached to the fire hydrants by wrapping canvas around the two items, extremely reducing efficiency use considering that the tallest buildings, such as: The Maryland Trust Company, the B &O Railroad Building, and the Continental Trust Building could be seen in flames from as far away as the city of Washington D.C.

This Image was taken from the Maryland Cultural Heritage Project, via web, as well. This image shows what department officials, during the fire, called the "Hot Corner", referring to the three buildings that caught ablaze around the same time. These buildings being the Maryland Trust Company (starting from left), the B & O Railroad Building, and the Continental Trust Building. Once the city's three tallest buildings caught ablaze the temperature was recorded as reaching as high as 2500 degrees on this one corner.

Image 1 photographed at 8:45 a.m.

 

Image 2 photographed at 11:30 p.m.

Image 3 photographed at 1 a.m.

Image 4 photographed at 3 a.m.

I retreived these images from a file at the Enoch Pratt Free Library and they came out of The Sun Paper, issued on February 6, 1966. These photographs show the progression of the fire, to spectators standing miles away from Baltimore City ( It did not say exactly how many miles away). As you can see in Image 1, that the Continental Building is still shown on the left. In Image 2 the building no longer appears, and by Images 3 and 4 you can see that the fire grew closer to the city's Shot Tower (The very narrow building in the middle of the images).

The Continental Trust Building did survive the fire and this is an image, shown below, of what the building looks like today, courtesy of The Historical Marker Database.

Now before we move along any further I wanted my blog readers to understand that, of course the fire engines in 1904 were nothing like the engines that we have in Baltimore today. Below are a few images of what I retrieved throughout my research and I photocopied, again, just to let my readers undertstand the equipment that the Baltimore Fire Department of 1904 had to work with.

There is a steam fire engine in the distance of this actual image shown above, but the image below is a close-up, hand drawn image.

A few horses and a steam pot for the fire fighter to sit on.....

In order to stop the spread of the fire, a dense decision was made by Mayor Robert M. McLane to dynamite in the John Duer and Son Building, located on Charles Street, and the Schwab Brothers Building, located on Charles and German Streets, in order to keep the fire grounded, which would eventually stop the spread of fire. This decision to keep the fire grounded was made on count of how the narrow width of the city’s streets caused the fires to bounce from building to building, but then backfired when the buildings, with explosives, contained in them, shook but never came down and the shake caused the fires to spread in other directions.


At around 8:00 pm the wind changed direction, blowing the fire towards the East, which unfortunately covered many parts of the city that weren’t expected to catch fire. However, the change in the wind’s direction did prevent City Hall from catching fire. Right when the blaze had spread close enough to the city’s main building, the flames then took the Eastward turn. Around this same time Philadelphia and Wilmington Fire Departments arrived. On to the second day the fire was continuously scattering, and by twelve midnight the Maryland National Guard decided to arrive with two thousand soldiers and sailors, most of the guardsmen arrived to cope with the surrounding audience. There were Baltimore citizens both grounded and standing on rooftops, all the while there were collapsing buildings and flying debris that could have possibly killed an onlooker. Around the same time that the Maryland National Guard arrived, another fire had started progressing in the Institute Association of Mechanical Arts, on the corner of Center Market and Water Street, due to flying debris of existing buildings that had already caught on fire from the opposite side of the city, five blocks away. Soon the two fires combined to form one large fire that covered almost all of downtown, which caused fire departments from York, Harrisburg, and Altoona all to arrive from Pennsylvania.

This image, shown above, was retrieved from the Maryland Historical Society in a file that contained the magazine, The Book of the Royal Blue. The magazine was issued in March of 1904 and held many interesting and detailed images that I shall publish later on throughout this blog. This specific image captured just a few of the 2,000 Maryland National Guardsmen that showed up to the fire.

The first sign of any halting of the fire came around 6:00 a.m. when Philadelphia fire fighters stopped the fire from spreading to the Light Street Piers and all of South of Pratt Street, by forming a barrier of water hoses, but the main seizing of the fire came around 11:00 a.m. of the same day when thirty seven fire engines formed a barrier at the Jones Falls, all of their hoses gathering water from the falls. The barrier stopped the fire from reaching East Baltimore and it took four hours to put out all flames of the fire, although the ambers took weeks to extinguish.

This is an image,shown above, once again, I retrieved from the Maryland Cultural Heritage Project. This image shows what the Jones Falls looked like in 1904. The bridge crossing over in the distance is one of the five bridges that crossed over the Jones Falls during this time. The five crossing bridges were what the 37 steam fire engines stood on in order to halt the spreading fire.

**Summary of the thirty hour fire came to thid blog through the research of The Maryland Encyclopedia and The Maryland Cultural Heritage Project courtesy of the Enoch Pratt Free Library.

Following the Great Fire becomes the Great Aftermath called the "Burnt District"

Final Photograph of what the city looked like after all flames were extinguished (Baltimore Afire, Williams). Left photograph looks down Charles Street and right photograph looks down Lombard Street.

Below are the actual statistics of the damage calculated that were published in the Balto American issued on February 7th of 1954:

If the image becomes hard to read here they are re-typed:

• 139.9 Acres burned.
• 98 blocks or squares destroyed.
• $125,000,000 value of property destroyed.
• $50,000,000 of that property insured.
• $32,000,000 of that property insurance paid.
• 10 national banks burned.
• 3 savings banks burned.
• 6 trust and deposit banks burned.
• 1 state bank burned.
• 4 railroad companies destroyed.
• 4 steamship companies destroyed.
• 9 newspaper companies destroyed.
• 9 hotels destroyed.
• So basically almost the entire downtown Baltimore was destroyed and **LOSS OF LIFE = 0.

**I must state that the zero number of deaths were very confusing to research due to some elements that I had to look into a little more. The Maryland Encyclopedia indicates that the Baltimore Sun did print a recently rediscovered issue stating that " A charred, colored man's remains were pulled from the Inner Harbor." This was also issued days after the fire. It is sad to say or think about this aspect, but the charred remains could have been due to a different event that had occurred with the body, for at the time racism was in full affect.

The Maryland Encyclopedia also explains that two National Guardsmen and two firefighters (one from New York and the other from Baltimore) died, due to the fire, but not directly from the blaze. The men had passed away due to pneumonia and tuberculosis, which was caused from the exposure to the fire.

I wanted to mention again, that I have previously stated in my introductory blog, that there was a magazine that was published a month after the fire occurred, which had some very detailed photos of the fire, and I was very excited to find an original copy of the magazine, courtesy of the Maryland Historical Society Library. The magazine is called the Book of the Royal Blue and was published through the B & O Railroad.

This is a photocopy of the cover of the magazine. You cannot see it in this photograph but once looked closely, in the upper right corner of the cover, you can see that the book was borrowed from the library from 1938 to 1940...... interesting.

Below are some of the detailed images within the magazine.

The image, shown above, is of the elevator shaft of the Continental Building. the Iron poles were forced to curl due to the 2500 degree heat that intensified on the "Hot Corner"

This image, shown above, is of Baltimore City as a whole. The shaded black part towards the bottom of the image is what was known as the "Burnt District". This is the only source where I could find a shaded area of what was ablaze in the city compared to the rest of the entire city. The other sources only showed the shaded area closely.

I also photocopied the back of the magazine, but in color, just to show my readers how intricate publishing was in 1904.

Now I must conclude my blog about the aftermath of the fire by explaining how the Mayor at the time, Robert M. McLane Jr., played a major part in how the Great Fire of 1904 spread throughout almost all of downtown Baltimore. Professor Peterson explains in A Howling Inferno: The Great Fire, that within an hour after the fire started, the chief fire fighter of Baltimore City was struck by a sparking electrical fire and was incapacitated for most of the blaze. On count of this occurrence, the Mayor of the city then had to direct all fire departments coming into Baltimore City.

McLane was thirty six at the time, which was recorded as the youngest mayor up to that point in time. Peterson referenced that spectators claimed McLane was a young, energetic mayor and acted more like a "macho" man during the fire than a leader, during his city's catastrophe. Onlookers claimed that the mayor simply stood in the streets cheering on the firefighters, while the firefighters claimed that the mayor had failed to set up a communications command center and that it was impossible to locate him. Also, as i stated in my introductory blog, McLane was the man who had approved to dynamite buildings that was believed the chief of the Baltimore Fire Department would have never chosen to do, and it is believed that the fire departments from other cities arrived late due to the lack of McLane agreeing to help from the other cities.

The Wikipedia explains that Mayor McLane was then quoted in the Baltimore News, after the fire, saying this:

"To suppose that the spirit of our people will not rise to the occasion is to suppose that our people are not genuine Americans. We shall make the fire of 1904 a land mark not a decline, but of progress.... As head of this municipality, I cannot help but feel gratified by the sympathy and the offers of practical assistance, which have been offered to us. To them I have in general terms replied, 'Baltimore will take care of its own, thank you'.

The Satisfying Story of the "Burnt District"

As I stated in my introductory blog, the true agruemental questions, when researching the Great Baltimore Fire of 1904, are "Should the fire be thought upon as a great disaster or should the fire be thought upon as a great outcome that came about through a great disaster?" or "Was the outcome of the fire worth the physical and emotional turmoil?", but before I explain the outcome of the rebuilding of the city I first wanted to explain the interactions of Baltimore's citizens of 1904 during the thirty hour fire.

I wanted to find in my research specifically how different spectators throughout the city felt at that current time. Upon my research, I was able to retrive a journal or autobiography of an anonymous "participant" called Two Febrauary Days 24 Years Ago Stand Out in Memory courtesy of the Enoch Pratt Free Library. This participant stated in her journal that, "Never was the community spirit more strongly in evidence. Men and women helped each other to move. Big trust companies opened their vaults and men who lacked faith in their own safes shoveled in money and securities by the millions of dollars, and got them all back intact when things cooled off. Jewelers did the same thing and thanked their lucky stars afterward". This excerpt clearly illistrates the trust and honesty of the citizens during this period.

Another example of the faith between one another, during the fire, is from the same reading. The particpant was in the presence of Mr. Putts, a man who owned the store J. W. Putts and Company on the corner of Fayette and Charles Streets, when he was asked by city offcials if they could dynamite his store. Mr. Putts is quoted as simply replying, "Sure. Blow it up if it will do any good!". When the owner was informed that he may lose insurance if it is destroyed he then replied, "Never mind the insurance."

I was able to find many other journal entries both at the Enoch Pratt Free Library and the Maryland Historical Society Library, due to the anniversary stories that the Baltimore Sun published each year, during the months of February and March. I chose four clippings that explained, greatly, successful stories that were able to be proudly explained due to the conflagation.

The first article was called "I remember When... At age 12 I covered the Great Baltimore Fire of 1904" and it was published on March 8, 1959. The article was about how the writer, E. Ridgely Simpson, was the youngest newspaper reporter to cover the first big fire. Simpson already had a paper out called Boy's Home Journal and he charged 5 cents a copy (The Baltimore Sun in 1904 only cost 1 cent), but it wasn't until he covered the story of Great Fire of 1904 that his paper became known amongst his neighborhood.
    Once Simpson heard the news about how Fireman McGlennen died (One of the firefighters that had passed away from pneumonia) He decided to take up a collection for the lost firefighters family through Boy's Home Journal. The Baltimore Sun's article then lists the names of the people who donated and how much they donated. Once counted there were around seventy participants, all donating any amounts from 20 cents to 3 dollars. The grand total was $31.66. According to the Consumer Price Index, this amount would be equaled to $789.86 in 2008.

The second article that I photocopied was called "I remember... Riding Into the Great Fire of 1904" and was published in 1965. The month is unknown. The article was about how Alethea E. Foreacre was the only passenger on the trolley that rode right into the heart of the fire. The article further explains how helpful and caretaking the dispatchers of the trolley were, when taking Foreacre for a five mile walk back to her house in Federal Hill, for she was only ten years old at the time, and the trolley was coming from North Ave. Foreacre also explains how her family benefited from the fire. Her father was one of the engineers who were in charge of bringing the horses and engines to Baltimore from Washington. When describing how the engineers of that period in time were so efficient she concludes, "He brought them by rail- and he brought them in 38 minutes, better time than you can make today."

The third article is called "I Remember... Picture Postcards of the Great Fire". It was published on February 2, 1975, and was a very interesting artice about how Henry F. Rinn's father benefted from the fire by taking photographs and publishing them on postcards, then selling them to others, who would then send the cards across country to family members. Rinn explains in his article, "He sent them off to Milwaukee, and in a little more than a week he had stacks of souvenir postcard pictures of the fire to sell. He sold all he had in stock, and continued to reorder for years."

The fourth article was a very humourous one starting with the title being, "Boy Got a Thrashing for Visiting the Fire" the author Russell Phillips then goes on to explain that the thrashing was "the finest thrashing I ever had!" Even though the fire earned Phillips a thrashing it earned his father a very large profit. His father, Vivian Phillips, was an idependent tugboat captain that towed "steamers" down to Canton Flats during the fire. Russell frther explains in the article how busy his father was during the thirty hour fire:

"So my father called up to them and said, 'That other bird is pulling you back into dock.' Well the captain chopped the hawser, and my father towed that steamer down to Canton Flats. I think he made $15,000 on that one, and then he came back and got some more.... He made $25,000 that day."

According to the Consumer Price Index, $25,000 in the year of 1904 is equivilant to $623,705.10 in the year of 2008.

In addition to the journals that I found while researching the city’s libraries, I came a across a website for a contracting company, called Mullan Contracting Company, that started during the fire and is still currently established here, In Baltimore, today. The story can be found, in detail, at the website below.

http://www.mullancontr.com/index.asp?pageid=41

It was a remarkable story to read about the founder of the company who, at the time before the fire, owned a milk hauling company on Greenmount Ave. Because of the city’s demand for companies of reconstruction, the founder of the company decided to turn his milk hauling company into a company that hauled most of the debris of the fire out of the city by horse and wagon.

I found it very interesting when reading the company’s mission statement which says, “[Our mission is] to ensure that our individual contribution to the process is one that enhances our client’s enjoyment and reward by creating a quality building product on their behalf”. In my opinion this same statement was probably the around the same mission statement that citizens of Baltimore City had when reconstructing the city, after the great fire.

The Picture Above was retrieved from the Royal Blue Book issued in March of 1904.

When explaining the accounts of the outcome of the Great Baltimore Fire one would have to discuss how the B & O Railroad played a significant role in the rebuilding of the city during and after the conflagration. During the first night of the fire, newspaper companies were faced with the dilemma of having a great story for their publications, but not having a building left to publish the issues. As I stated in the beginning of my second post, there were four newspaper companies destroyed and the Baltimore Herald was one of the publications that faced that dilemma. According to the Wikipedia- the Free Encyclopedia, the Baltimore Herald was printed the first night of the fire at the Washington Post in exchange for the Baltimore Herald to give photos of the blaze to the Washington Post, but once the publishers of the Washington Post recognized that there had already been a previous agreement with the Baltimore Evening News, the Washington Post then explained that they couldn’t agree to any further terms with the Baltimore Herald. The Baltimore Herald then agreed to terms with the Philly Evening Telegraph to have the Baltimore Herald printed nightly on Philadelphia’s press for the next five weeks.

Now the B & O Railroad plays a significant role in the newspaper’s quandaries, because the railroad was the system, in both cases, that transported the newspaper into Baltimore City each morning, in time for the sunrise, and because of Baltimore’s connections with the railroad system, all transportation during the free was free of charge.

All Newspaper clippings that I came across of the Baltimore Herald issued on February 8, 1904 were not in any condition to post onto my blog. Instead I offer a copy below of the Baltimore Sun issued on the day after the great fire.

After the thirty hour fire, it’s not so hard to believe that the citizens of Baltimore City, might have pessimistic thoughts of how quickly the city would rebuild itself. Large companies, banks, and skyscrapers were destroyed inside and out. Few homes were destroyed, but 35,000 people were unemployed. Affectionate requests to give money and help were made by many surrounding cities, but were soon sent away my Mayor McLane, and the first step to restoring the city was to form the Citizens Relief Committee.

    The Citizens Relief Committee was formed with the group of twenty nine people, including Mayor McLane, and six additional people for the executive committee. The Link below shows the specific indivuals who started the committee.

According to the General Collections from the Library of Congress

The first meeting was held on February 13, 1904, four days after the fire. The committe met in the reception room of the city hall, that is still standing today, in order to come up with a report in order to confirm that there will be a transformation. In addition to forming a report, in which the committee was able to adopt within several days, the committee was granted $23,000.00, from the state through the requests of the Relief Fund Commission, under the conditions that they were to employ the best citizens for relieving the needs of other citizens,and  to pay out to the indiviuals of the Maryland National Guard who were called during the fire.

The reports that the committee formed came about to be known as the Burnt District Reports and they were apporved by the state of Maryland and set forth on March 11, 1904. All of the literature can be found at the Enoch Pratt Free Library, but it is also offered online courtesy of the library, for it is much easier to read in the link below.

BURNT DISTRICT REPORTS

In Summary the reports cover all of the following ideas:

• To define the duties and powers of each indiviual of the committee.
• To regulate the methods of procedure within the committee.
• To clarify the ectent of the said district.
• To provide for opening, extending, widening, straightening, and closing streets, lanes, and alleys.
• To establish public squares and market spaces.
• To plan and build lines and widths of sidewalks.
• To add or extend partly filling harbors and basins.
• To establish public wharfes and docks.
• To propriate a portion of the general sinking fund of Baltimore and other moneys for purposes of the stated above actions.

The committe started renovations as soon as the reports were approved and below are some examples of the approved renovations.

The image below is looking North on Charkes Street, days after the fire, on the intersection of Charles and Lombard Streets. This image was retrieved from Baltimore Afire by Harold A. Williams

Now the image below is looking down from the same intersection, only two years later, but with a great example of how the committee widened the streets.

Here are other examples below of the same examples of widened sidewalks and streets, but the images photographed looking downBaltimore Street.

While researching the reconstruction procedures  of the "Burt District", in the Enoch Pratt Free Library, I came acrosss an interesting article that was issued in August of 1906. The article was called "Baltimore Homecoming", but the newspaper that printed the issue is unknown. The article was inviting  former citizens of Baltimore, from across the entire country to come home to Baltimore in order to celebrate the renovations of the city. There article states, " The 'Homecoming' is for the purpose of showing off the new city, rebuilt since the great fire in February, 1904. With many of the old buildings burned there were also many foggy ideas, and the new ideas are in line with the energies displayed by the grandfathers and great-grandfathers of the present generation....Since February 7, 1904, 600 new buildings at an estimated cost of $25,000,000." The article also describes how Baltimore City has benefited from the fire stating, "Wholesale trade has increased about 50 per cent, and merchants are coming here to buy goods who never bought in Baltimore before." Perhaps due to the amount of publicity that the fire recieved, merchants chose to buy from Baltimore in order to build it's economy.

There was an another article that I retrieved form the Maryland Historical Library titled "A Greater City Rises From the Ashes". The article was issued on January 1954, and again the company who issued the article is unknown, but the article covers most of the statistical data that describes specicfically the amount of growth recieved after the fire.

The first graph below describes the population growth of the metropolitan Baltimore from 1900- 1953 and the second graph describes the baltimore bank clearings from 1904- 1953.

Very sigificant increases in growth.

In Conclusion....

The Great Baltimore Fire played a huge significance in bringing the citizens of the city, of different cultures, together to form a bond that had never died during the reconstruction of the "Burnt District". When relating back to our previous class discussions on how Baltimore got the nickname "Mobtown", it is hard to believe that all religions and enthnicities of the indiviuals came together with each other. Perhaps the citizens of Baltimore strongly belived, after distinguishing the fire, that their faith and honesty with one another would have to be the main contrinution with the reconstruction of Baltimore. The caring actions that I kept finding when researching newspaper articles of the indiviuals were so unfamiliar to read about within a great city, but it certainly proves to readers that actions always speak louder than the words that were spoken previously.

Week of November 16th Update

I have finished most of my research on this project, but I am still looking forward to going once again to the MD Historical Society on Saturday due to the amount of journals they obtain of Baltimore's citizens who have written about the event during 1904. I found a large list of journals that i can look through that I have printed from their web page.

I have also finished many outlines. Some thorough, some not so thorough, which became a huge help as to how I would like to format the paper and I strongly recommend others to do so. I was very intimidated at first about how to start this entire project, but these outlines helped me to discover what I have and what I still need.

I am very disappointed because the website below is the only website that has the main (and only) footage form the fire and I cannot access it.

http://www.mdch.org/fire/

This is a crucial part of my blog and I'm hoping that it is just my computer that won't allow access- for the only other place that I can watch the film is at the Library of Congress.

Update for week of November 8th

I must admit that I haven't been accomplishing as much research as the rest of the class has up to this point due to midterm projects from all of my classes up until this week. I have completely dove into research starting in the beginning of this week and will be spending many saturdays in the Enoch Pratt Free Library and MD Historical Society.

I have found MANY helpful sources pertaining to "The Great Baltimore Fire of 1904" including information in the media during this period and in journals of the citizens during this period as well. Although, I would like to find more information from The Sun Paper by going back to the main library and printing the original copies.

Although it took me quite some time to get the boost that I needed to get deeply involved in this project, I am still confident that this reasearch project will become very successful.

Weekly Update

I have started my reaserch by searching online just to get a concept of how much information I am going to have to cover during this project. I started by googling images and found some very AMAZING photographs that were taken before, during, and after the fire. These images then led me to some interesting facts about the mishap from the websites from which they came from.

Next week I will start to thoroughly look through information at libraries and archives starting with the Maryland Room at our main library. I tried to search information on the Langsdale Library website and was surprised to find that we didn't have any information on the fire at our school library.