Baltimore Fire, The

DESCRIPTION: "It was on a silver falls by a narrow That I heard a cry I ever will remember... Fire, fire, I heard the cry From every breeze that passes by... While in ruin the fire was laying Fair Baltimore, the beautiful city." About the terrible fire in Baltimore
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1929 (recording, Charlie Poole & the North Carolina Ramblers; first printed in Maury's Songster of about 1905)
KEYWORDS: disaster fire
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
Feb. 7-8, 1904 - Fire wipes out almost the entire downtown section of Baltimore.
FOUND IN: US(SE)
REFERENCES (4 citations):
Cohen/Seeger/Wood-NewLostCityRamblersSongbook, p. 97, "Baltimore Fire" (1 text, 1 tune)
Rorrer-RamblingBlues-LifeAndSongsOfCharliePoole, p. 87, "Baltimore Fire" (1 text)
Cohen-AmericanFolkSongsARegionalEncyclopedia1, pp. 176-177, "Baltimore Fire" (1 text plus an excerpt from "Boston Fire," the inspiration for the piece)
DT, BALTFIRE*
Roud #12392
RECORDINGS:
New Lost City Ramblers, "Baltimore Fire" (on NLCR03)
Charlie Poole and the North Carolina Ramblers, "Baltimore Fire" (Columbia 15509-D, 1930; rec. 1929; on CPoole02)
NOTES [3366 words]: The Baltimore Fire was one of the greatest urban fire disasters in American history, but this song really doesn't say much about it. The only line that is really specific to Baltimore (other than the word "Baltimore" itself) is the first line about the "silver falls by a narrow," which I presume refers to Jones Falls, one of the lines where the fire was stopped.
The best book about this event is Peter B. Petersen, The Great Baltimore Fire, All citations in this entry are to Peterson unless otherwise specified.
Fire had apparently long been a problem in Baltimore (p. 2), but the Great Fire "may have been Baltimore's defining disaster" (p. 1). The city had had a volunteer fire department until 1859, when a regular fire department was instituted (p. 4), but it was at first under-resourced, The Clay Street fire of 1873 was a worse disaster than any that came before, showing that a large fire was beyond the ability of the local department to handle (pp. 4-7).
According to p. XIV, it was on Sunday, February 7, at 10:48 a.m. that "[A] fire alarm sounds at the Hurst Building, located between Liberty Street and Hopkins Place on the south side of German Street." (At the time, the Hurst Building had German Street on its north, Hopkins Place on its east, and Liberty Street on its west. German Street is now called "Redwood Street." p. 15. Liberty Street, based on the map on p. 9 of Weldon, was at that time a street that ran northeast/southwest, breaking the grid pattern of the city; Liberty Street no longer runs as far south as German/Redwood street, and Redwood doesn't meet Hopkins Place. So the location of the Hurst Building is no longer a street corner; on a modern map it would be on Hopkins Place about halfway between Baltimore Street and Lombard Street. It appears there is a parking lot and an outdoor food court there now, next to CFG Bank Arena. The Digital Maryland site, which has a photo of the Hurst Building; gives the address as 20 Hopkins Place. All of the architecture in the area now appears much more recent than the fire. As best I can tell, there is no memorial marker on the site; the Baltimore Fire marker is to the east, where the fire was stopped.)
The John E. Hurst building was a typical commercial building of the era: six stories tall, almost as tall as it was wide and long; it you include the basement, it was probably almost cubical. It was primarily a warehouse, not a store; the products it offered were sold by drummers/salesmen at external locations.
At the time of the fire, the building was being used to story dry goods, some of them highly flammable. It being a Sunday, the building was empty of people. The hypothesis is that the fire was started by a cigarette or cigar butt that fell through a broken "deadlight" -- deadlights being glass fixtures in the sidewalk that carried a small amount of sunlight into the basement of the building (p. 15; Welden, p. 11). With no one to notice the fire, it could establish itself before anyone observed it from outside the building. (It is possible that it started out on Saturday night and burned very slowly until it hit something highly flammable.)
Welden, p. 13 says that February 7 began as a "raw, cloudy, blustery" day with temperatures a little above freezing and patches of snow on the ground. The wind was a brisk twenty mile per hour breeze from the southwest. The wind would strongly influence the course of the fire.
In all, based on Welden, p. 57, it was eventually a 21-alarm fire. The first, automated, alarm came in at 10:23 a.m., but it was a type of alarm that often arose from causes other than fire, so apparently nothing was done. (According to Welden, pp. 11-12, the alarm came from the "Baltimore National Automatic Fire Alarm System," This system had two triggers, one for a temperature of 130°F, one for 150°F. If the lower one went off, a messenger was supposed to be sent, but the fire companies were not called unless there was no one in the building. In this case, there was no messenger sent; Welden thinks perhaps he was on another call.) The next alarm, at 10:48 a.m., was an automated alarm also, but it was based on high temperatures, so a crew was sent (p. 16). Finding a blaze in the basement of the Hurst Building (Welden, p. 14-15); they fought the fire with a single water hose and a single chemical hose. It was not enough to control the blaze (indeed, it sounds as if breaking in to fight the fire may have brought it enough air to burn faster). A salvage corps officer fired a manual alarm at 10:51 (p. 17); another was sounded by about 11:00 a.m. It was too late; the building exploded within minutes (at 11:05 a.m., according to Weldon, with the walls collapsing at 11:25), injuring some firefighters (apparently the first inuries caused by the fire). That opened up channels for even more oxygen to enter the building, so the fire blazed up still more (p. 18). Several pieces of equipment were destroyed by the explosion, though no one was killed (p. 18).
Peterson on p. 130 has a photo of what was left of the building after the fire. One wall is still standing; the sign "John E. Hurst & Co." still legible, but the windows in that wall are destroyed and the rest of the building is gone.
The explosion would create the first hero of the saga -- only it wasn't a human, it was a horse. "Goliath" was the lead horse of a team that was bringing in more equipment; it responded to the explosion by veering away -- and so saved the crew and engine from being hit by a falling wall (pp. 18-19; Welden. pp. 15-16 says Goliath was the off horse of the team). There is actually a children's book about the horse, Claudia Friddell, Goliath: Hero of the Great Baltimore Fire. (It worked out pretty well for Goliath, who became "the most popular" and the "most famous" animal in Maryland; pp. 180, 192. Other fire horses were sold -- often to the glue factories -- when the fire department didn't want them any more, but Goliath was officially made him a fire horse for life, so it was allowed to retire in peace; p. 192).
Hero Goliath may have been -- and it had the burns to prove it -- but the explosion allowed the fire to spread beyond the Hurst building (p. 19).
Conditions helped spread the fire. The strong southwest wind, allowing the flames to spread to the north and east (the most dangerous direction). There was very little danger toward the west, where the buildings faced away from the fire; such sparks as blew that way hit brick walls and died out (Welden, p. 16). But the buildings to the east (almost all commercial; p. 20) were such that fires spread in them rapidly. And the fire equipment available was old and did not have the power to spray water on the upper stories where the fires were breaking out (p. 21). At about 11:40, Baltimore Chief Fire Engineer George W. Horton sent a telegram to Washington D.C. asking for help (pp, 21-22). He also called out all Baltimore units.
The Washington fire units did an incredible job of turning out -- the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad managed to move them between the towns in a near-record 38 minutes. Unfortunately, when they arrived, they found that most of their equipment was almost useless because Baltimore hydrants used connections that didn't fit the Washington hoses (p. 28; fire hydrants were not standardized at that time. The Baltimore Fire helped encourage standardization).
Eventually a police cordon was formed (to eventually be joined by the National Guard; p. 33, though there were real problems organizing the Guard regiments involved even though they came from Baltimore; pp. 66-67), but many people in the affected areas were desperate to retrieve their cash, records, and stock (pp. 23-24, 26). And gawkers arrived in vast numbers (pp. 24-25). They made it hard for the police to control them -- and for the fire crews to work (p. 25).
Around noon, Chief Horton was hit and burned by a live trolley wire. The fire department's surgeon gave him opiates and sent him from the scene. Suddenly, the best fire expert the city had was no longer available (p. 25). A younger man, August Emrich, was in charge for the rest of Sunday (p. 25), with some advice from a former chief named William C. McAfee (p. 26). Emrich eventually concluded that the blaze could not be controlled with the available equipment and set his crews to stopping any new blazes that might let the fire spread (p. 29).
Many groups took emergency actions. The gas company re-routed gas out of the mains over Jones Falls to prevent an explosion, and reactivated an old plant to keep the lines supplied. No such change could be made for the trolley system; around 4:00 it failed due to lack of electricity (p. 30). And one of the city's hospitals had to be evacuated by ambulance (p. 35). Courthouse records also had to be evacuated (p. 36), and a telephone exchange; telephone operators would be working long shifts for a long time to come to meet the demands of the situation (pp. 37-39).
Meanwhile, mayor Robert M. McLane was convening a group of city staff. Edward D. Preston, the city's chief building inspector, suggested blowing up buildings to try to restrict the blazes (p. 25). This led to an intense argument arose over who would pay for the buildings the mayor intended to dynamite (p. 31). This argument was apparently not settled when the dynamiting began around 5:00 p.m.
The dynamiting was a flop -- it sounds as if they had no competent demolition expert. The first building they blew up did not collapse. An attempt in another building produced a big hole in the ground and a lot of flying debris. Similar problems plagued other attempts at demolition; the buildings did not collapse, but flaming debris flew far afield and spread the fire to places that had not previously been threatened (pp. 32-33; Welden, pp. 26-27).
This wasn't the only bad move by Mayor McLane (described on p. 65 as prone to decisive action but not very knowledgeable about what to do). For several hours, he refused to accept help from other cities, though eventually the fire grew bad enough that he had to give in (p. 46).
Late in the day, the winds shifted to the northwest (p. 30). It appears, if I read the maps on pp. XIV-XV correctly, that this actually caused the fire to spread faster late on Sunday and on into Monday, but it also meant that the flames were approaching the bay of the Patapsco River, which flowed into Chesapeake Bay and was too wide for embers to blow across. The fire would never cross the Patapsco, though the ships at the wharves there had to scramble to move away from the oncoming blaze (pp. 88-89) and a fireboat was kept busy trying to protect the facilities (pp. 92-93).
Governor Edwin Warfield arrived from Annapolis that evening (p. 39), although his attention seemed to be more on his business interests in Baltimore than on the needs of the city.
Other cities eventually sent help, including Philadelphia, Wilmington, and New York, though they had problems with their logistics (pp. 43-44). Smaller towns like Annapolis, Maryland, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania (p. 54), Chester, Pennsylvania, and Atlantic City (p. 61) also sent engines and crews. Even President Theodore Roosevelt was involved, calling on the District of Columbia police to take part (p. 65).
The biggest help was probably the shift in the wind. It meant that the fire could only spread south and east. Welden, p. 22, estimated that it took about an hour and a half to cover each city block. On the south side, the Patapsco stopped it. On the east, it continued until it came to Jones Falls, a smaller river. (Online photos make it appear fairly pretty, but apparently at the time it was a "miserable dirty stream" and a "source of miasmic vapors" in which Baltimore's sewer system dumped untreated sewage; p. 99.) Jones Falls was not wide enough to stop the blaze (about 75 feet across; p. 85; with bricked-up banks for flood control, according to Welden, p. 23), but it was enough of a barrier that fire crews could put out any firebrands and embers that crossed it (p. 59). This was probably the best-organized part of the response: crews from all over took places on the east side of the Falls (or even on the five bridges over it, in one case fighting the fire while the bridge burned under them!; p. 99), while police and guards cleared out the residents (and drunks visiting saloons) in the areas just west of the Falls (pp. 73-75). In all, 37 companies are said to have worked to guard the Jones Falls line (Welden, p. 50). It was important to try to stop it there; if the fire crossed the Falls, it would reach residential districts and lumberyards that were far more flammable than the mostly-stone buildings west of the Falls.
The neighborhoods east of the Falls were heavily Italian and Jewish, and many of the residents there helped stop the spread by watching for sparks and wetting down their own homes (Welden, pp. 24-25
Many east of the Falls prepared to evacuate (p. 96), but it wasn't necessary. Although a few small blazes started there, all were put out without too much ado (pp. 98-101). The winds on Monday shifted again, blowing the fire back toward the regions already burned (p. 102) and leaving it nothing new to burn. The exact time the fire went out is variously estimated from about 11:30 to 3:00 Monday (p. 103); it was officially declared under control by 5:00 p.m. on Monday (p. XV), though crews were still on the scene on Tuesday (p. 62) -- ironically suffering both fire and cold, since the temperature fell below freezing on both Sunday and Monday nights; many of the photos of the fire show water frozen on buildings, electrical wire, etc.
More than 150 firefighters eventually were treated for injuries and burns, though none were life-threatening (pp. 83-84). Amazingly, Baltimore declared that no one was killed, either among the firefighters or the residents, although there is some evidence that a Black man was burned and fell into the Patapsco (p. 104; p. 105 speculates that he was ignored either because he was Black, or because he couldn't be identified, or just because Baltimore didn't want to admit to any deaths).
Even apart from that Black man, the "no deaths" is too optimistic. No one died of burns or buildings collapsing on them, but p. 196 says that three men died later in February as a result of "pneumonia," i.e. smoke inhalation. Another man is said to have died in 1906 of tuberculosis caused by exposure. I'm not sure I buy that one, but the three "pneumonia" cases are obviously real. It appears, based on p. 196, that two of the three were in National Guard members; only one was a fireman. That's out of 463 paid firefighters on the Baltimore force (Welden, p. 55), Amid all the criticism of the Baltimore fire department, that low death rate is a fairly impressive statistic.
In the end, the fire burned a roughly triangular region bounded by the Patapsco on the south, Jones Falls on the east, and Baltimore or Fayette Streets on the north. (At least, that's what the map in Petersen looks like. The map on p. 175 of Greene is more of a quadrilateral, with a long eastern face roughly following, I think, Liberty Street.) The area included much of Baltimore's commercial and financial district."The entire area that Baltimore's city founders had laid out in 1729 was now a bleak landscape of hollowed building, smoking ash, and rubble" (p. 103).
In all, the fire covered more than 140 acres (just less than a quarter of a square mile, or about two-thirds of a square kilometer), representing seventy city blocks. 1500 buildings and four lumberyards are said to have been lost; 2500 businesses was burned out. 35,000 people were thrown out of work (p. 179), which in a city of 540,000 probably represents something like a fifth of the work force. (However, p. 199 says that 86 blocks were burned, estimating the losses at $70 million 1904 dollars.) This was small compared to the already-past Great Chicago Fire, or the San Francisco Fire to come two years later -- but, being on the east coast, there were more journalists to cover it (including H. L. Mencken), plus there were all those firemen from other cities to spread the word. So the world was very aware of the fire.
The end of the fire did not mean an end to the problems. Gutted buildings had to be destroyed, which meant more demolition (p. 76), which in turn meant that people had to be kept away from the "Burnt District" (although, since demolition took place only during the day, the National Guard cordon did not have to be maintained on a 24-hour basis -- a great relief to all involved). A system of passes was instituted to control who got in and out, though there were many complaints about its implementation (pp. 77-78).
The National Guard was finally released on February 23, about two weeks after the end of the fire (pp. 79-80).
Not surprisingly, there was a good deal of recrimination after the fire (p. 117). The Baltimore fire department was accused of having too little equipment (probably true), of following incorrect doctrines (also probably true), and of having too-small hydrants (pp. 118-120). The practice of dynamiting buildings was also criticized (p. 120) -- though that was more the mayor's fault.
Within days, local businesses started making plans to rebuild, and financiers around the country were offering capital to help (pp. 126-129).
There were economic effects even for businesses outside the burnt district, simply because of the hit to local commerce. Peterson cites the example of Johns Hopkins University, which wasn't damaged but suffered a blow because of all the damage to associated businesses (pp. 172-173).
Large-scale cleanup operations began on February 11 (p. 176), they began by clearing the roads in the area, then removing other rubble. Then they tore down what was left of the ruined buildings. A city commission worked with the Maryland legislature to pass legislation to help with the rebuilding (p. 177).
It all proved too much for Mayor Robert M. McLane, Jr.. He was very young -- just 35, and not yet married (he would get married three months after the fire); he had been mayor for less than a year at the time of the fire (pp. 132-133), and his victory had been narrow enough to provoke lawsuits (pp. 135-136). But the fire, and the politics that followed, was too much for him; on May 29, 1904, barely more than two weeks after his marriage on May 14, he blew out his brains (pp. 139, 141). Under Baltimore's rules, that made a political opponent, a city council leader named E. Clay Timanus, the new mayor (p. 141). It probably didn't affect the reconstruction much, though.
The fire did produce some long-term benefits: The city had already produced a plans for a sewer system (they hadn't had a complete system until then, and much of the sewage simply went into streams and rivers like the Patapsco and Jones Falls), and the destruction of the downtown gave them a core area from which to build it out. Even the waterfront needed infrastructure upgrades. Also, the destruction allowed them to rebuild the area with wider streets (Greene, p. 174), which would be beneficial one the automobile took over the area. (According to Welden, p. 58, there were no streets in the area wider than 40 feet, and many were 20 feet wide or narrower -- simply not wide enough for four lanes of traffic, or even two lanes of traffic plus parking spaces.)
There is one humorous note in all thise: supposedly when the New York crews were called up, they went racing to New York Harbor to try to douse the ferryboat City of Baltimore, only to find that it was not on fire (p. 56, which admits that the tale is "possibly apocryphal").
The fire was big enough to gain national attention; soon after it took place, H. D. Northrup published World's Greatest Calamities: The Baltimore Fire and Chicago Theatre Horror, though Peterson says it "was short on accuracy" (pp. 9-10). And yet, oddly, Greene's history of Baltimore gives it less than a page of coverage, and my histories of the state of Maryland give it no more than a line or two. This song, non-specific though it is, seems to be one of the chief memories of the event. - RBW
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