Great Fire of Pittsburgh

The Great Fire of Pittsburgh occurred on April 10, 1845, destroying a third of the city and causing between $6 million and $12 million in damage. While having little effect on the culture of the city except to spur further growth, it would provide a temporal reference point for the remainder of the century and beyond.

The city of Pittsburgh originated in the mid-18th century as a French military settlement at the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers. It remained relatively small through the end of that century, but the 19th century brought rapid growth of a population made up of natives of English, Scottish, and German descent, as well as large numbers of immigrants. By 1845, its population topped 20,000 and was swelled by crews completing the new Pennsylvania Canal.

The city’s growth had been haphazard, resulting in a patchwork of the rich homes and businesses of the city fathers intermingled with tightly packed abutting wooden structures housing its largely-immigrant labor force. Its outstripped infrastructure provided poor water pressure and an insufficient volume to its ten ill-equipped volunteer fire companies, which were more social clubs than effective public service organizations. The year before, the city had completed a new reservoir, but had then closed the old one. However, the water lines and pumpers were inadequate. There were just two water mains for the entire city, and the fire companies had insufficient hose to reach the center of the city from the rivers, most of the existing hose having been condemned.

Iron manufacturing had developed in the city, and had come to represent a quarter of its industrial output. The furnaces driving Pittsburgh’s iron and glass industries had filled the air with coal dust and soot, as an 1823 observer reported, coating the walls and leaving the men working in the streets "as black as Satan himself," while Charles Dickens had written in 1842 that the city had a "great quantity of smoke hanging over it." Other industries released flour dust and cotton fibers into the air, contributing to a particularly incendiary mix of dust to settle on the city. In addition, the seasonal weather had deprived the city of rain for six weeks, leaving the reservoir "dangerously low," while frequent near-gale-force winds from the west hit the city at mid-day. These conditions left Pittsburgh primed for the disaster that would strike in 1845.

The dawn of April 10, 1845, brought a warm, windy day. During a brief interlude in the winds just before noon, Ann Brooks, who worked on Ferry Street for Colonel William Diehl, left unattended a newly stoked fire lit to heat wash water. A spark from this fire ignited a nearby ice shed or barn. The fire companies responded, but got nothing but "a weak, sickly stream of muddy water" from their hoses, and the flames quickly spread to several buildings owned by Colonel Diehl, including his home, and to the Globe Cotton Factory. The bells of the Third Presbyterian Church had given the original alarm, but the church itself was only preserved by dropping its burning wooden cornice into the street. Once saved, its stone walls served as a barrier to the further spread of the fire toward the north and west. Then the wind veered to the southeast and gave the fire added vigor; a witness stated that "the roar of the flames was terrific, and their horrible glare, as they leaped through the dense black clouds of smoke, sweeping earth and sky, was appalling."

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