The fireproof building : technology and public safety in the nineteenth-century American city

"The Fireproof Building traces the development of structural fire protection in America and its important consequences for building construction as well as for the safety of cities. Urban conflagrations destroyed many downtowns in the nineteenth century. To protect their property, some owners made their buildings fire-resistive - or as they were called in the past, fireproof - by using new kinds of noncombustible materials and arranging the space inside to check the spread of fire. As these methods improved and owners replaced combustible buildings with fireproof ones, urban firestorms became a thing of the past."--BOOK JACKET.