It was the morning of February 7, 1904. A pile of wood shavings had caught fire in a dry goods store and spread, smoke and heat bellowing upwards. The ensuing explosion shook the quiet Sunday streets of Baltimore.
So began the Great Baltimore Fire, a conflagration that would burn 140 acres of downtown Baltimore and 70 city blocks, destroying over 1500 buildings and burning out 2500 businesses. The fire threw 35,000 people out of work and sent the city into a turmoil of flames and smoke for two days.
Before the Fire
Baltimore authorities had long been conscious of the threat of fire. In 1747, city ordinances required homeowners to keep ladders tall enough to reach their rooftops and forbade the use of highly combustible fuels. By 1763 an organized volunteer fire department was in place, aided, by 1769, by hand-powered water pumps. The construction of attached wooden buildings in congested areas of the city was outlawed in 1799.
