Engine House No. 18

Engine House No. 18 is the oldest operating fire station in Detroit and the third-oldest extant fire station building in the city. Detroit's fire department began in 1824 and 1825 with the city's first purchase of a fire engine and the establishment of the first volunteer company. The city took its first steps toward creating a professional fire department in the 1858-60 period when it began looking at steam-powered apparatus which could throw a more powerful stream a greater distance than the hand-pumpers and when it began paying firemen rather than relying on volunteer companies. In 1867 the city, with authorization from the state legislature, established the Detroit Fire Department as a professional force headed by a board of fire commissioners. The city's fire alarm telegraph system was also established in the same year. The city constructed a number of fire stations in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to serve newly developing areas along the city's edges. The site on which Engine House No. 18 was built was purchased November 6, 1891, from Erhard Kudinger for $2100. Detroit architects Mason & Rice designed the building, which was constructed by Vinton & Co. at a cost of $20,228.14. A building permit was issued on August 29, 1892. Engine Company 18, which occupied the building, was organized May 1, 1893.

Constructed in 1892, Engine House No. 18 is a two-story, rectangular building of Late Victorian design, with a high double-pitch hip roof crowning its front section and much lower jerkinhead roof over a slightly narrower rear section. The building has red brick walls with red-orange sandstone and brick of a more salmon hue used for trim. A flat-roof, one-story rear addition dates from 1949. The station also retains a one-story, brick storage building located at the back of the property. Engine House No. 18 occupies a mid-block location on the northeast side of Mt. Elliott Avenue between Sylvester and Pulford streets just east of Gratiot Avenue on Detroit's northeast side. The area is today an economically depressed residential neighborhood of frame, late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century houses, with many vacant lots and abandoned buildings. The station faces southwest on Mt. Elliott Avenue.