Update: Rebuilt with much of the same construction materials.
I once read an article in the Washington Post years ago about how cities in the suburbs of Washington, DC were learning that non-brick construction allowed fires to spread quickly, and they were revising codes to require brick on sides of houses. Didn’t people already discover that 6,000 years ago?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Louis_Fire_(1849)
The fire of 1849 led to significant building code changes. It is one of the major reasons we came to be “Brick City.”