At 10:48 a.m. on Sunday, February 7, 1904, a fire was reported at the John Hurst and Company building on West German Street at Hopkins Place in downtown Baltimore. Supposedly, someone had tossed a smoldering cigarette into the basement. Although the city had a professional and well-trained fire department, by the time they arrived, the building was engulfed in flames, with winds from the harbor fanning the fire in the direction of neighboring buildings in the downtown district.

It soon became apparent the blaze was too much for their woefully inadequate equipment. At the time, pumpers and tankers were still pulled by teams of horses. In addition, the cities themselves were tinderboxes. Buildings were constructed of wood in close proximity to each other, fire breaks weren’t built into city planning, and building codes were either nonexistent or not enforced. Many streets and alleys were often crowded with cars, wagons, and discarded items, while others were just too narrow for fire wagons to squeeze through under even the best conditions.

It quickly became apparent that the fire that began at the John Hurst and Company building was out of control…and out of the capabilities of the Baltimore Fire Department. Pushed along by prevailing winds, the flames spread north through the retail shopping area as far as Fayette Street and began moving eastward. Firefighters sent out telegraphs to surrounding communities, asking them to send equipment and manpower. Nearby cities such as Philadelphia, Washington, D.C. , New York City, Wilmington, and Atlantic City responded…but it took hours before horse-drawn pumpers, wagons and other related equipment would arrive, as much of had to be carried via train.

When they did arrive, however, an entirely different problem presented itself: at the time, firefighting practices and equipment were largely unstandardized, with each city having its own system. As such, the hoses and couplings brought by neighboring departments were useless; they didn’t fit the fire hydrants in Baltimore.

The fire lasted into the following day; it took about 30 hours for it to be extinguished completely. When all was said and done, an 80-block area of downtown Baltimore was in ashes, leaving more than 1,500 buildings completely destroyed and an additional 1,000 heavily damaged. The estimated cost of the fire was $100 million (over $3 billion today) and, as the fire affected only commercial buildings, 35,000 people were left unemployed. Although, officially, no lives were lost directly from the fire, four firefighters ultimately succumbed to pneumonia, which they were thought to have contracted during their exposure to the blaze.

Surprising everyone, much of the destroyed area was rebuilt in relatively short order. More importantly, the city adopted a building code, stressing fireproof materials. But the greatest legacy of the Baltimore Fire was the push it gave to adopt standardized firefighting equipment in the United States.