Though central to the social, political, and cultural life of
the nineteenth-century city, the urban volunteer fire department
has nevertheless been largely ignored by historians. Redressing
this neglect, Amy Greenberg reveals the meaning of this central
institution by comparing the fire departments of Baltimore, St.
Louis, and San Francisco from the late eighteenth to the
mid-nineteenth century. Volunteer fire companies protected highly
flammable cities from fire and provided many men with friendship,
brotherhood, and a way to prove their civic virtue. While other
scholars have claimed that fire companies were primarily working
class, Greenberg shows that they were actually mixed social groups:
merchants and working men, immigrants and native-born--all found a
common identity as firemen. "Cause for Alarm" presents a new vision
of urban culture, one defined not by class but by gender. Volunteer
firefighting united men in a shared masculine celebration of
strength and bravery, skill and appearance. In an otherwise
alienating environment, fire companies provided men from all walks
of life with status, community, and an outlet for competition,
which sometimes even led to elaborate brawls.
While this culture was fully respected in the early nineteenth
century, changing social norms eventually demonized the firemen's
vision of masculinity. Greenberg assesses the legitimacy of
accusations of violence and political corruption against the
firemen in each city, and places the municipalization of
firefighting in the context of urban social change, new ideals of
citizenship, the rapid spread of fire insurance, and new
firefighting technologies.
Originally published in 1998.
The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand
technology to again make available previously out-of-print books
from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press.
These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these
important books while presenting them in durable paperback
editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly
increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the
thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since
its founding in 1905.
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