The paid department: organized 26 November 1886

1886–1920 · FROM VOLUNTEERS TO A CAREER SERVICE

The Kalamazoo plan: The change was studied before it was made. On 26 July 1886 a committee sent out to examine paid fire departments in other cities reported in favor of the system in operation in Kalamazoo, and recommended for South Bend: one two-horse hose carriage, two one-horse carriages, one hook and ladder truck with a sixty-foot extension ladder drawn by two horses, and one two-horse chemical engine, manned by ten paid firemen and a fire chief and aided in emergency by twenty called men — the cost of making the change estimated at nine thousand dollars. The common council adopted the recommendation. The Tribune's summary dates the council's resolution to "the year previous," 1885; Howard dates the committee's report to July 1886; the two are printed as they stand.

Organization: "The paid fire department was formally organized, November 26, 1886." Howard's sentence is the department's birth certificate, and the Tribune's summary agrees in date and adds that the department was "organized and pressed into service Nov. 26, 1886." On 10 January 1887 Chief Isaac Hutchins — an old volunteer, and the last chief engineer of the volunteer department — reported the paid department in full working order, and on his recommendation all the volunteer companies were disbanded. The station history compiled with the department's help prints the transition a year later, recording that in 1887 the department was chartered as a paid, full-time fire department with Isaac Hutchins named chief; the organization of November 1886 and the working order of January 1887 are the dates the contemporary record gives, and the 1887 charter year stands beside them. Hutchins began with eleven men and twenty call men and two assistant chiefs, John Donahue and Jacob F. Kerner; later one assistant was dropped and the call-men plan abolished. The first companies were those at the central station — Truck Company No. 1 and Chemical Company No. 1, in a small brick building on the north side of Jefferson Street between Main and Michigan; Hose Company No. 1 followed, on the north side of LaSalle Avenue across from the Sheridan hotel, in a two-story frame building whose roof leaked on the men below.

The chiefs of the paid department: The Tribune's 1907 summary names the paid department's chiefs to that date in order: Isaac Hutchins, William Baker, Jacob F. Kerner, Irving Sibrel and Wilfird Grant. Grant, who had served two years as a volunteer with Hose Company No. 4, had been on the department since its organization and chief since 1 September 1902; his first assistant, William Smith, had entered the volunteer service in 1877, been made second assistant in 1892 and first assistant in 1898. The succession from Grant to the modern line carried in the Public Servants section is not whole in the record reached: the Board of Public Safety minutes of 1 April 1935 show a Chief Freeh reporting in detail on the repairs the fire stations then needed, and the next chief the record names is Alex Andrejewski, in the Board's minutes of 1 January 1956. The gap is printed as a gap.

The department in 1907: Twenty years into the paid era the Tribune could print, and Howard preserve, a complete state of the department. It consisted of 58 men and 28 horses, with rolling stock in active service of a Seagrave hook and ladder truck, a chemical engine, two chief's wagons, a supply wagon, an electricians' wagon and eight hose wagons, and in reserve a hook and ladder truck, a hose wagon and a spring wagon. Ten fire companies worked from eight stations; at the central station stood three companies — truck, chemical and hose — and at each of the other seven a hose company with full apparatus. The year's account for 1906 was $57,048.61, of which $46,384.29 was salaries; the board of public safety valued the department's property at the close of 1906 at $131,461.68, the central station house and lot alone at $40,000. On the Fourth of July 1907 the department celebrated the anniversary with a street parade that Howard calls the greatest public display ever inaugurated by the "fire laddies" of the city. A business men's leaflet of the same year, reprinted in Howard, counts the paid department at twelve companies — against the Tribune's ten — and the two figures stand unreconciled.

Horses out, motors in: Brown's 1920 account closes the era this entry covers: the department of nine companies and a central station, "equipped with a chemical, two trucks, one service and one aerial; also the hose and pumper," its horse-drawn apparatus "being rapidly replaced by motor driven vehicles," its chief and all its members paid, and a Fireman's Pension Fund standing behind them. The date of the first motor apparatus is not in the record reached; the transition is complete in Brown's telling by 1920. The department's mid-century peak is given by the station history: 300 men and 15 stations during the 1960s — the largest the service ever stood, against the 256 firefighters and 11 stations of the present department.

Sources:

1. Timothy E. Howard, A History of St. Joseph County, Indiana (1907), vol. 1, "Sec. 4 — Fire Department" — the Kalamazoo committee report of 26 July 1886, the formal organization of 26 November 1886, Hutchins's report of 10 January 1887 and the disbandment of the volunteers, the 1906 expense account and the 1906 property statement, and the Fourth of July 1907 display.
2. South Bend Tribune summary of the fire department, 4 June 1907, quoted whole in Howard (1907) — the eleven men and twenty call men, assistants Donahue and Kerner, the first central companies, the 1902 central station, the chiefs' list to Grant, and the 1907 strength of 58 men and 28 horses with the rolling stock enumerated.
3. John A. Brown, The Story of South Bend (1920), Chapter XI — the department of 1920: nine companies and a central station, motorization under way, the Fireman's Pension Fund.
4. South Bend business men's leaflet, reprinted in Howard (1907), vol. 1, "Sec. 7 — South Bend Summary" — the paid department counted at 12 companies.
5. City of South Bend, Board of Public Safety minutes, 1 April 1935 (city document archive) — Chief Freeh's report on station repairs.
6. South Bend Fire Department historic stations page (monon.org), compiled with the department's assistance — the 1887 charter year and Hutchins named chief; the 1960s peak of 300 men and 15 stations.