The houses

1839–1972 · THE STATIONS IN BRIEF

The first houses: The service's first home was the wooden fire house of 1839 on William G. Ewing's lot at Clinton and Main, replaced in 1845–46 by the $337.78 engine house on city property. In 1860 the Second Ward engine house was erected at the northeast corner of Court and Berry streets — the old engine house at the rear was torn down two years later — and a building added behind in 1863 for the ladder truck of the Alert Hook and Ladder Company. The marker at the first Central Fire House site describes the 1860 house: a two-story brick structure with a bell tower, housing two steam fire engines and two hose wagons, the Mechanics and Vigilant engine and hose companies stationed there.

Engine House No. 3: The house the city remembers is No. 3, on West Washington Boulevard, built in 1893 — at first only the two east bays, with six men, four horses, a hose wagon and a chemical wagon. Doubled in size in 1907 with a two-story wing and bell tower, it became the city's largest firehouse; a rear wing followed in 1909, and at its peak twelve horses stood in the station. A History Center photograph shows Fire House No. 1 about 1897, on Main Street between Barr and Lafayette, in the horse era's full order.

The museum: Engine House No. 3 was retired in 1972, when the department completed a new modern central fire station on East Main Street. The Fort Wayne Firefighters Museum was organized on 20 April 1974, leased the old house from the city in 1975, opened on a limited basis in 1981, and received the building's deed on 8 April 1987 — the department's own artifacts, from hand pumpers to steamers, kept in the house that housed the horses. The modern department's scale — eighteen stations across the city — is carried in the department's entry in the Fort Wayne Today section.

Sources:

1. Griswold, Pictorial History (1917), Ch. XXV — the 1839, 1845 and 1860 houses.
2. Fort Wayne Firefighters Museum — Engine House No. 3's building history (1893, 1907, 1909, the 1972 retirement, the museum's organization and opening).
3. The History Center, post of 17 October 2016 (Fire House No. 1, c. 1897), and the first Central Fire House marker inscription, both as reproduced on ACGSI's fire-station pages (acgsi.org).