Standing Ready

AFTER THE SEATTLE Fire Department's unfortunate response to the city's "Great Fire" of 1889, the city learned a lesson and immediately set about building a handful of new firehouses. The first of these were up already in 1890, and all of them showed considerable architectural flare, with curving towers, grand gables and meandering rooflines, fanciful doors and several different sidings in the same structure.

Then in the early 20th century came what Jim Stevenson, in his book "Seattle Firehouses," describes as the "standard style." With an ever-growing need for fire protection in a booming city, the additions were "plain, boxy houses . . . uniform in size, materials and plan and usually without decoration." Greenwood's Firehouse No. 21 is an example of the standard big box, but altered by the addition of a wing on the right. There is also considerable variation in the windows and siding.

Firehouse No. 21 opened at the northeast corner of 73rd Street and Greenwood Avenue in 1908, and for 14 years bedded six horses until a tractorized steamer and a motor hose wagon replaced them in 1922. While the new apparatus could respond more quickly to emergencies, the old ways were not without their ingenuity. When the horses were still galloping from these big doors they were first speedily hooked to their wagons with harnesses hung from pulleys on the ceiling.

This view appears in the 2005 Greenwood-Phinney Calendar, a production of the ever-vital Phinney Neighborhood Center. Purchase a calendar (at $10 each they are available at several Greenwood neighborhood businesses, as well as at the center itself, 6532 Phinney Ave. N.) and see the 11 other photos, plus a 1912 map of the Greenwood-Phinney neighborhood.

Paul Dorpat specializes in historical photography and has published several books on early Seattle.