The Blaze in the Night

First, the good news: the house was unoccupied. You need to know that before I post the photo.

Photo shared on Howard County Department of Fire and Rescue Services Facebook page

And here’s the post:

Howard County Department of Fire and Rescue Services:

Yesterday at approximately 10:00 p.m. firefighters responded to the 3100 block of Saint Charles Place, Ellicott City. Units arrived to find heavy fire throughout the structure. The house is located in a wooded area so crews additionally worked to extinguish surrounding trees and brush.

The house was unoccupied. There were no reported injuries to firefighters. Crews will remain on scene for an extended time for searches and overhaul.

Fire investigators from the Office of the Fire Marshal have started their investigation into the cause and origin of the fire. We received mutual aid from Baltimore County and Carroll County.

Something about Saint Charles Place rang a bell and I remembered vaguely a house that was for sale years ago. I fell in love with it with the kind of wishful thinking that keeps you from acknowledging that your fantasy house is too large to keep clean.

Dream Home Ellicott City: Modern Design at 3173 Saint Charles Place, Ellicott City Patch, Brandie Jefferson

I enjoyed the fantasy of turning it into an arts school and performance space. That’s what imagination is for, after all. I daydreamed, I bought a lottery ticket. Time passed. I forgot all about it.

When I saw the report today I immediately wondered if this was the house. I don’t know. I did some digging around and discovered two things.

1. Most of the houses on Saint Charles Place look nothing like my dream house. I’d love to understand the big picture of how that neighborhood was developed.

2. Saint Charles Place as a residential neighborhood is connected to another fire which occurred in 1911 and did a great deal of damage to St. Charles College, a Roman Catholic seminary. The ruins of that fire are called the Terra Maria Ruins and exist, from what I gather, as a sort of park.

Again, I have no way of knowing if the house in question is the particular one that caught my fancy back in 2013. The news of the fire dredged up those memories and piqued my curiosity once again.

Still, no matter whose house it is, it is sad news. And it looks like a very large fire that took a supplemented force to subdue it. I’m grateful for the work of the firefighters and relieved that no one was in the house.

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