Sun archives: The Great Baltimore Fire of 1904

February 8, 2004

Memories of loss, inspiration

A century later almost to the moment, Mayor Martin O'Malley, Fire Chief William J. Goodwin Jr. and other city fire officials commemorated yesterday the day a fearsome blaze began burning down vast swaths of downtown Baltimore.

February 7, 2004

Marks of blaze remain visible

Ever wonder why North Charles Street narrows above Fayette Street? Because that's where the Great Fire of 1904 stopped - and so did the subsequent widening of Charles.

February 7, 2004

Sun editorial

A century

One hundred years ago today, Baltimore's great fire destroyed much of downtown; we reprint here the front page of The Sun describing the disaster. The newspaper office was at Baltimore and South streets, and was abandoned at 11 p.m. on Feb. 7 as embers rained down on the roof. A chartered train took a crew of editors and printers to Washington, where they got the paper out on the presses of The Washington Star. It was distributed from Camden Station the next morning.

February 6, 2004

Great Fire is history that did not go up in smoke

The story of the Baltimore Fire, which raged for two days beginning Feb. 7, 1904, really has little to do with the fire itself, with the fact that it destroyed 70 city blocks, left 35,000 people without jobs or ruined more than 1,500 buildings.

February 5, 2004

Family

At its centennial, revisit Great Fire and its aftermath

It was a fire of catastrophic proportions. In about 30 hours, 140 acres of downtown Baltimore burned, the fire taking down 1,526 buildings and 2,500 businesses in its fury. The Great Baltimore Fire of 1904 was disastrous. But Baltimore would rebound. And within three years, Baltimore's business district would be rebuilt and reborn. It would, in fact, be better than before.

February 5, 2004

Lost in the Great Fire

Call it history, urban myth, civic pride or boosterism, but for a century Baltimoreans have believed no one died in the Great Fire of 1904.