Great Baltimore Fire
[1] 1,231 firefighters helped bring the blaze under control, both professional paid truck and engine companies from the Baltimore City Fire Department (B.C.F.D.)
Courthouse, fire passed the historic Battle Monument Square from 1815 to 1827 at North Calvert Street, and the quarter-century-old Baltimore City Hall, built in 1875 on Holliday Street; and finally spread further east to the Jones Falls stream which divided the downtown business district from the old East Baltimore tightly-packed residential neighborhoods of Jonestown (also known as Old Town) and newly named "Little Italy".
Much of the destroyed area was rebuilt in relatively short order, and the city adopted a building code, stressing fireproof materials.
Perhaps the greatest legacy of the fire was the impetus it gave to efforts to standardize firefighting equipment in the United States, especially hose couplings.
Close living quarters; lax, unenforced, or non-existent building codes; and a widespread dearth of firefighting services were all contributing factors to the frequency and extent of urban fires.
Most could only watch helplessly after discovering that their hoses could not connect to Baltimore's gauge size of water hydrants, although a machine shop in the Locust Point area of the city did start making coupling rings to overcome this problem.
[6][7] In addition to firefighters, outside police officers, as well as the Maryland National Guard and the Naval Brigade, were utilized during the fire to maintain order and protect the city.
[citation needed] Meanwhile, back at the General Post Office, employees kept spraying water on the building's sides and roof and were able to minimize damage and save the 1889 Italian Renaissance edifice with its nine towers and central tall clock tower (later razed and replaced by the current 1932 building, later converted to city use as Courthouse East).
'"[9] Two years later, on September 10, 1906, The Sun reported that the city had risen from the ashes and that "One of the great disasters of modern time had been converted into a blessing.
[11] An autobiography written by Alice Mae Cawthorne tells of a couple named Mr. and Mrs. Chambre who lost their twin daughters in the Baltimore fire.
[16] Mayor McLane's mysterious and sudden death later that year, ruled a suicide, was also attributed by some of his contemporaries to the stress of post-fire reconstruction.
[citation needed] Public pressure, coupled with demands of companies insuring the newly re-built buildings, spurred the effort.
[2] H. L. Mencken, future famed columnist/commentator/author and linguist, survived the fire at the beginning of his blossoming journalism and literary career, but the offices of his newspaper, the Baltimore Herald (at the northwest corner of St. Paul and East Fayette Streets), were destroyed on the northern edge of the "Burnt District".
Mencken related the fire and its aftermath near the end of the second volume of his autobiographical trilogy, Newspaper Days: 1899–1906, published 1941, "When I came out of it at last I was a settled and indeed almost a middle-aged man, spavined by responsibility and aching in every sinew, but I went into it a boy, and it was the hot gas of youth that kept me going.
For the next five weeks The Herald was printed nightly on the press of the Philadelphia Evening Telegraph and transported 100 miles (160 km) to Baltimore on a special train, provided free of charge by the B&O Railroad.
The fire also devastated the city's other major newspapers, including The Sun with its famous "Iron Building", considered the forerunner of modern steel skyscrapers, built 1851 at East Baltimore Street.
Across the intersecting South Street-Guilford Avenue was the publishing headquarters of the Baltimore Evening News, founded 1871 and built in 1873 with its mansard roof and corner clock tower.
More recently, the Baltimore-based rock band J. Roddy Walston and the Business memorialized the fire in "Nineteen Ought Four", on their album Hail Mega Boys.
