Ann Arbor Central Fire Station

One of the earliest and more elemental approaches to collective fire fighting in Ann Arbor was a municipal fire code which required citizens to respond to the threat of conflagration by shouting 'fire!' Later and more sophisticated efforts led to the founding of regular volunteer fire fighting companies. At the sounding of the fire bell, Ann-Arborites in shops, mills, churches, and schools dropped their various tasks, dashed into the street, raced for the firehouse, hauled out hose, hooks and ladders, and pumps, and towed the equipment by hand to the site of the threatened building; their efforts were an exhilarating mix of collective response to danger and the good old human thrill of a fire, the clanging bell and roaring flames, men unselfishly pitted together against a common foe. As the City of Ann Arbor grew, however, the good old human thrill of hauling heavy fire fighting equipment around by hand decreased. More and more frequently, the men seen huffing and puffing along Huron Street with a pumper in tow were actually University of Michigan students rather than year-round Ann Arbor residents.

By 1880, the all-volunteer system had entered its last decade in Ann Arbor. One of the first signs that Ann Arbor was starting to take a graver and more efficient look at the business of fighting fires was the construction of a large, permanent firehouse capable of housing a considerable amount of fire fighting equipment at the corner of Huron Street and Fifth Avenue. In May, 1882, the aldermen of Ann Arbor agreed to receive plans for a municipal firehouse. They were firm in insisting that they wanted a utilitarian structure, fireproof (of course), and inexpensive.

They fixed $10,000 as the maximum amount they would spend. The first floor was to contain space for a steamer, hand engine, hook and ladder truck, stables, coal bins, kitchen, and dining room, and the second level was to include bedrooms, an office, a meeting room, and a hayloft. Clearly, the day had passed when a sufficient citizen response to fire consisted of shouting 'fire.' When the new firehouse was being planned, Ann Arbor's fire fighters were responsible for protection of a growing university, a burgeoning public school system, several factories, six newspapers, mills, tanneries, breweries, jewelry stores, blacksmith shops, a magnificent new courthouse, library, and museum, and, of course, a patent whiffletree company. More crucially, the fire fighters were charged with the protection of 10,000 human beings.

A new firehouse at $10,000, one dollar per being, would make a good buy, if the aldermen could indeed hold the price at that modest level. A plan was accepted, and work on the new structure started immediately. The contractor hoped to have the new firehouse walled in before the snow started to fly. In the meantime, the city maintained its all-volunteer force (the five dollars annual salary paid to each fire fighter wasn't a real threat to the fire fighter's amateur status).

The force was bolstered, however, with the purchase of a team of horses to tow the 3,000 pound hook and ladder truck. To compensate for this new expense, the city fathers thriftily arranged to have the horses plough nearby fields and grade dirt streets between fires. When the fire bell clanged, the firemen weren't the only ones who raced for the firehouse: coming around the corner the other way were the sweat-slicked horses, who were probably as happy to escape their road-work tasks as the firemen were to leave their mills and tanneries. The butcher, the baker, the whiffletree maker: they were all brothers in the cause when disaster rang in the firehouse tower.

The bond of fraternity forged in those hours of supreme effort carried over into the quiet hours when the fire had been doused, the horses groomed, the trucks preened and polished, when, in that less busy era, a man could escape his job for a while to relax with friends and commune with the world. 'The hook and ladder boys have the custom of taking an annual excursion out to Whitmore Lake,' the Ann Arbor Courier reported in the summer of 1882, 'so they are going out tonight about 23 strong and will stay several days.' While the hook and ladder boys relaxed together at Whitmore Lake, ground was broken for the new headquarters on Huron Street. An earlier firehouse on the site was knocked down, and an editor sighed, 'another old landmark is gone,' no doubt with a troubled shake of the head for the city's lack of interest in historic preservation. The contractor worked hard against the impending winter, and by early November the newspaper was able to report, 'work is being rapidly pushed on the Firemen's Hall. The windows are in place and almost surrounded by the adjacent walls.' In June of the following summer, the new firehouse was completed, with all the appropriate civil and journalistic hoopla and fanfare.

The building was an only slightly muddled specimen of the popular Italianate style of architecture, a genuine work of pride for a little city which had only emerged from the woods a half century before. In 1883, as now, civic pride was a matter of priorities, and the proud new firehouse on Huron Street was not accomplished without some cost to other spheres of public responsibility. In January, 1883, Ann Arborites learned from their newspaper that, 'there are ninety inmates of the poor house, and among them at present there is an unusual amount of chronic sickness.' Two weeks later, readers were informed that, 'the supervisors are waking up to the fact that our jail is in a deplorable condition, and after visiting it yesterday morning they have about come to the conclusion that a new one should be built.' The new firehouse cost the taxpayers of Ann Arbor almost exactly the amount the aldermen had promised it would cost. Ann Arbor was proud of its firehouse as it was proud of having wrought a real and solid city from the forest, proud of having successfully joined hands to protect what everyone had accomplished, more proud of that than of the poor house, and with good reason.

To a substantial degree, the Huron Street firehouse symbolized a larger transition for Ann Arbor, that pivotal moment when the city dedicated itself to growth and traded the old communal spirit of the frontier for the community spirit of the twentieth century. In 1888, Ann Arbor hired the city's first full-time professional fireman. In 1915, the city's fire fighting equipment was motorized. By then, Ann Arbor had electric trolleys, four banks, interurban railroad connections with the rest of urban southeast Michigan, 'everything that goes to make a city habitable, comfortable, convenient, and attractive.'

The Ann Arbor firehouse is a modified specimen of the Italianate style. In applying this essentially residential style to a public building, the designers necessarily used heavier, richer lines in certain places, giving the building a vague suggestion of later Renaissance Revival modes. This suggestion is visible particularly in the heavy cornices and elaborate window surrounds. The truncated hip roof is just steep enough to further suggest the mansard roofs of later popular designs without departing completely from the more typically Tuscan Revival hip roof.

The building has an almost anti-picturesque rectangular plan, broken up only by an extension tower on one corner of the front facade. It is a two-story, brick (stretcher bond) building with three large doors for trucks in the front of the first level. The roof has decorated gables in the centers of the two street-side slopes.