At 10:30 on the night of October 12, 1865, a fire that started on the waterfront rapidly spread, and despite valiant efforts by the fire department, by the next morning the inferno had leveled one hundred twenty-five buildings in a twenty-acre section of downtown. The following year, the City passed an ordinance prohibiting the building of wooden structures in the downtown area. In 1873, another fire at one of the wharfs spread quickly throughout the same district burned earlier, and this time the blaze extended into the residential district as far as High Street and caused one death.