The Great Boston Fire of 1872

On November ninth, eighteen seventy-two, a fire broke out in a dry-goods warehouse on Summer Street. It was just after seven in the evening. Within twelve hours it had consumed sixty-five acres of downtown Boston's commercial district, destroyed more than seven hundred buildings, and produced a total property loss of approximately seventy-three million dollars, the equivalent of well over a billion in current values.

What made the fire particularly catastrophic was something that had nothing to do with the buildings. In the weeks before November ninth, a contagious disease had swept through the horse population of greater Boston. The epizootic, as it was called, a respiratory illness, had incapacitated so many fire horses that the city's fire department could not fully staff its steam-powered apparatus. When the alarm sounded on Summer Street, firefighters had to pull their wagons to the scene by hand. By the time adequate equipment arrived, the fire had spread far beyond any reasonable chance of early containment.

A quarter of Boston's insurance companies were bankrupted by the claims that followed. Companies from as far as London defaulted on their policies. The financial shock propagated through the American insurance industry in ways that took years to resolve, and the direct result was the first serious standardization of fire codes and insurance regulation in the United States. Future fires in American cities would be fought differently, in buildings built differently, because of what burned on Summer Street.

Downtown Crossing, where you are now, is built on the footprint of what was lost. The reconstruction happened fast, within a decade, in the High Victorian commercial style that still gives the neighborhood its character. You can read the fire in the date stamps on the cornices if you know to look up.