Don't Yell "Dinner!" In A Crowded Fire House
What Do You Think You're Looking At? #248
For one more consecutive week, we are back in downtown Silver Spring. Two weeks ago, I looked at a very old local business; last week I wrote about the interesting building that old store is located in; and this week, I’m looking at a building across the street.
Once again, I will quote an old 2001 Washington Post story about the store I was originally writing about, which notes some other establishments in the neighborhood:
Dor-Ne sits in a shopping center at 8126 Georgia Ave. that is being renovated. Workers are tearing down walls and putting in electricity to turn other empty storefronts into rentable space for new restaurants, a cleaners and boutiques. A few doors down is a music shop. Across the street, mechanics fix transmissions and firefighters hang out in front of their station, next to a well-established flower shop.
Huh, I thought, a fire station. I wonder what it looked like, or if it’s still there. So I checked the map, and since I was going to Silver Spring to photograph the store, I also photographed the fire station building.
Here it is, from the front:
And from the back:
And along the side:
So, not a firehouse anymore, but still more or less intact! The old garage bays were retained to make a semi-open interior and patio. And the name of the current establishment is a clear nod to the building’s history. Pretty neat!
Here, from the Silver Spring Fire Department’s “Our History” page, is a photo of the old firehouse in operation, from 1954. (That page is fascinating; give it a read!)
Here’s a screenshot of a Loopnet page on the address, which shows it still as a fire station but in much more recent years:
The official Maryland property record indicates that the Silver Spring Fire Department sold the building in 2007. And it gives a build year of 1962. The ladder date is correct, but the latter date is, in fact, mistaken!
This building had an even earlier life than as a fire house. And it looked pretty different, too.
According to this Maryland Inventory of Historic Properties form, the fire department took over and altered the building in 1927. Its original construction was in 1915, when it served as an armory and looked like this. (It looks like the mechanic shop/auto garage next door is also still intact.)
In between 1915 and 1927 the fire department stored its first extremely basic fire truck in a garage behind the armory. It seems like at some point before 1927 the building may have been shared by the fire department and the armory, but after 1927 it solely became a firehouse.
The text from the historic inventory document is not selectable, so I’m going to share this screenshot of the document:
As the document notes, 1915 is also the year Silver Spring first had a fire department. It’s such an interesting place; on the one hand, a lot of what’s there is historic, because it spans the development of Silver Spring from barely a small town to almost a D.C. satellite city.
On the other hand, in the sweep of history, it’s all very brief. It’s very American, how quickly we build and transform things. It’s all part of it.
Related Reading:
What Do You Think You’re Looking At? #17
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If you want to visit an even more intact fire station, visit the Old Fire Station #3 restaurant in Fairfax.
In Philly there's a similar restaurant in an old mid-block fire station that's appropriately named "Jack's Firehouse". It's in a row of adjoining commercial buildings that appear to have been built in several different eras, but still share common walls. It's also right across the street from the historic Eastern State Penitentiary, so it's a real smorgasbord of urban architecture on that block.