The Great Bangor Fire of 1911 stands as the city’s single most horrific and defining event of the 20th century. Eighty-nine years ago tomorrow, the still of another Sunday afternoon was shattered by a wind-whipped inferno that claimed two lives, six churches, a synagogue, dozens of private residences and 100 business blocks.

There was a devilish beauty in the rosy glow of the night sky, visible as far away as Brunswick, 100 miles to the south. In the days following the disaster, crowds of the curious estimated at 35,000 saw nothing beautiful in the rows of charred elms along Harlow Street, or the shell of Norumbega Hall between Central and Franklin streets where U.S. presidents and stars of the stage once appeared.

As city planners today dream of a reburbished downtown and waterfront, they should look back at the transforming 1911 calamity, which reportedly was kindled by indigent men smoking in J. Frank Green’s hayshed on Pickering Square. Modern fire equipment and trained personnel these days would halt such a fire in its tracks, but in the days of slow-moving apparatus and tightly grouped wooden, granite and brick blocks, the fire spread rapidly. A stiff wind carried embers across the Kenduskeag Stream to Exchange Street, then up State Street to Broadway, down Park Street, Central Street, until being stopped by a fire wall on Franklin Street. That wall spared the old City Hall on Hammond Street and all of Main Street.

The fire had a silver lining. Sixty percent of the $3,168,080.99 loss was covered by insurance, allowing many businesses to rebuild bigger and stronger than before. And since most of the homes that burned belonged to the wealthy, only about 75 families needed public assistance. Mayor Charles W. Mullen refused all public aid, exemplifying a pride and optimism that infuses city government to this day.

A six-block area of downtown was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984, a reminder of an awful day beyond the memory of all but a few living today. But post-1911 reminders are everywhere apparent today, from the public parks built as fire breaks to the handsome office buildings that arose from the ashes. April 30, 1911 changed the face of the Queen City for all time.