During the period of America's swiftest industrialization and urban
growth, fire struck fear in the hearts of city dwellers as did no
other calamity. Before the Civil War, sweeping blazes destroyed
more than $200 million in property in the nation's largest cities.
Between 1871 and 1906, conflagrations left Chicago, Boston,
Baltimore, and San Francisco in ruins. Into the twentieth century,
this dynamic hazard intensified as cities grew taller and more
populous, confounding those who battled it. Firefighters'
death-defying feats captured the popular imagination but too often
failed to provide more than symbolic protection. Hundreds of fire
insurance companies went bankrupt because they could not adequately
deal with the effects of even smaller blazes.
Firefighters and fire insurers created a physical and cultural
infrastructure whose legacy -- in the form of heroic firefighters,
insurance policies, building standards, and fire hydrants -- lives
on in the urban built environment. In Eating Smoke, Mark Tebeau
shows how the changing practices of firefighters and fire insurers
shaped the built landscape of American cities, the growth of
municipal institutions, and the experience of urban life. Drawing
on a wealth of fire department and insurance company archives, he
contrasts the invention of a heroic culture of firefighters with
the rational organizational strategies by fire underwriters.
Recognizing the complexity of shifting urban environments and
constantly experimenting with tools and tactics, firefighters
fought fire ever more aggressively -- "eating smoke" when they
ventured deep into burning buildings or when they scaled ladders to
perform harrowing rescues. In sharp contrast tothe manly valor of
firefighters, insurers argued that the risk was quantifiable,
measurable, and predictable. Underwriters managed hazard with
statistics, maps, and trade associations, and they eventually
agitated for building codes and other reforms, which cities
throughout the nation implemented in the twentieth century.
Although they remained icons of heroism, firefighters' cultural and
institutional authority slowly diminished. Americans had begun to
imagine fire risk as an economic abstraction.
By comparing the simple skills employed by firefighters --
climbing ladders and manipulating hoses -- with the mundane
technologies -- maps and accounting charts -- of insurers, the
author demonstrates that the daily routines of both groups were
instrumental in making intense urban and industrial expansion a
less precarious endeavor.
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