The Fireproof Building: Technology and Public Safety in the Nineteenth-Century City. By Sara Wermiel. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000. Pp. viii, 301. $45.00.

Extract

Sara Wermiel's carefully crafted and informative The Fireproof Building explores the evolution of structural fire protection in the United States from its origins in the late eighteenth century through the nineteenth century with special emphasis on its role in the development of skyscrapers. Without the specialized technological developments described by the author, large public buildings, which are the centerpieces of most contemporary cities, would be impossible. Although many scholars have examined the engineering of tall buildings and their historic conquest of height in the modern city, Wermeil provides a compelling argument for the broad significance of fire-resistant methods in the development of the twentieth-century urban landscape.