November 9, 1872: The Great Boston Fire

November 9, 1872: The Great Boston fire breaks out, still the largest in the city's history.

It began at 7:20 PM, in the basement of a commercial warehouse at 83 Summer Street. When it was finally contained, 12 hours later, 65 acres of downtown were burned to the ground. The city lost 776 buildings, including most of its financial district. The offices of The Boston Globe and The Boston Herald -- today, Boston's 2 remaining daily newspapers -- were both destroyed. Blankets to cover buildings were credited with saving the Old South Meeting House, starting point for the Boston Tea Party. It is believed that at least 30 people died, including 12 firefighters.

Boston wasn't America's first city, but it was the most-developed of America's early cities. And it was designed much like London, the city with which its residents were most familiar: The streets were narrow, and the buildings were close together.

Many of the buildings were too tall for fire ladders to reach the upper levels, and the pressure from the fire hoses was often insufficient to extinguish flames on the roofs of the buildings. Thus, the fire could spread from rooftop to rooftop, and across narrow streets.

Many of the affected buildings were made of brick and stone, but with wooden framing. Also, wooden mansard roofs were a common architectural trend of the time period. The steep pitch of a mansard roof allowed for more storage in the upper levels of a building. However, these roofs were flammable, due to their wooden construction. Additionally, the warehouses of downtown Boston commonly stored dry materials in the eaves of the roofs, increasing the flammability. Merchandise stored in the attics of warehouses was not considered taxable inventory.

To make matters worse, there was an equine flu epidemic in the Autumn of 1872, and since horses were needed to pull firewagons in the era before the internal combustion engine, it made getting a sufficient number of firefighters to the scene harder.

It had been just 13 months since Chicago had an even bigger fire. John Damrell, Boston's fire chief, traveled to Chicago to see what they were doing in response, and came back with ideas for improved fire equipment and water infrastructure. In addition, many downtown streets were widened, something only possible due to some of the buildings having burned down.

Nevertheless, the loss of buildings that housed banks, brokerage houses, insurance companies and law firms was devastating, and was a factor in the Panic of 1873, which caused a depression lasting, depending on the definition, anywhere from 4 to 6 years, the worst the country would see until the 1890s.

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November 9, 1872 was a Saturday. Baseball season was over. Basketball hadn't yet been invented. Hockey barely had. Even college football barely existed, and only 1 game was played on this historic day: Rutgers beat Columbia, 5-2 at College Field in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Under the current scoring system, this would have been 30-12 -- 35-14 with successful extra points.