Emeryville Fire House
On April 28, 1907, a small fire smoldered undetected inside the Umphred Furniture Warehouse at the foot of Park Avenue in Emeryville. With the building’s contents providing plentiful fuel, the flames spread quickly, steadily driving the interior temperature higher and higher. Suddenly, in that awesomely destructive instant known as flashover, the windows exploded, and in minutes the building was totally involved. Burning brands and cinders began raining fire onto the Emery railway station. Soon it too was ablaze. The intense heat caused nearby oil tanks to begin seeping their flammable contents onto the dusty ground. The leaking oil ignited, and pressure in the tanks increased until by turns they exploded in flames. The burning buildings and flaming pools of oil spewed a grotesque column of gray and black smoke into the wavering sky. The fire burned on, out of control: there was no fire department in the Town of Emeryville.
The disastrous Umphred fire finally convinced the Town of Emeryville to establish its own Fire Department. Although the Umphred fire was eventually contained by units of the neighboring Oakland fire department, both the warehouse and the rail station burned to the ground. With its increasingly fire-prone industries, Emeryville could no longer rely on the goodwill of its neighbors, Oakland and Berkeley, to fight its fires.
A New Firehouse
Accordingly, in May of 1908, the Board of Trustees bought a 60 x 125 lot at 4331 San Pablo Avenue for $4,500, and In January of 1910 allocated $7,000 to build a firehouse to serve the town. Two months later, a contract was awarded to builder E.C. Bridgeman, and the firehouse was completed in October of that year at a final cost of $9,733.
Regrettably, the architect of this handsome structure is unknown today. The plan of the building was forty feet wide and sixty-five feet deep. In addition to the ground floor apparatus room, the second floor contained a dormitory, chiefs office, kitchen, captain’s room, and sitting room. A sixty-five foot tall hose-drying tower rose from the rear of the structure.
Although the tile roof suggests Mission style architecture, the overall proportions of the building, and in particular the massive (if impractical) arches of the apparatus room, hark to the monumental Romanesque civic buildings of architect H. H. Richardson. Such stoutly proportioned buildings were in vogue around the Bay Area near the turn of the century, although the style had originated on the East Coast some twenty years earlier. Other local buildings in the so-called Richardson Romanesque style were the Piedmont Baths, now demolished, and the Alameda City Hall.
Drastic Changes
A remodel of the firehouse was undertaken in 1926 to accommodate the growing department. The Romanesque archways were squared off and a third doorway added between them, drastically altering the building’s appearance. A minor earthquake around this time damaged the hose-drying tower, and it was subsequently removed. By the end of the twenties, the firehouse bore scant resemblance to the original design.
Thus remodeled, Station No. 1 served all of Emeryville for the next forty-one years. Inevitably, however, Emeryville’s growth demanded a second fire station. In 1949, the city proposed construction of a second station to serve the north end of town, and Station No.2 was completed in February of 1951.
Modernist Directness
Architecturally, the two stations could not have differed more. In the four decades since Station No. 1 had been constructed. an architectural revolution had occurred. Revivalism-the use of styles based upon antique precedents-had been superseded by Modernism, with its famous dictum: Form Follows Function. Plain surfaces, flat roofs, and frank use of structure became the architectural order of the day.
Thus Station No. 2 abandoned the use of ornament and tradition in favor of Modernist directness. Spare, angular structure is emphasized in the form of large, interpenetrating planes of concrete. Even the shading of openings is accomplished by integral concrete “eyebrows” cantilevering from the walls (of this type of detail, a critic once jibed. “Does it really take all that concrete to stop a little sunlight?”). Another favorite Modernist device, the use of “floating” lettering, is seen above the eyebrow of the main doors.
Station No. 2 is currently at the nadir of architectural popularity. Modernism has now been Widely rejected by architects and lay persons alike as sterile and unimaginative. Yet inevitably—perhaps in a matter of decades—its star will rise again. Thus, we should recognize that no style is the “right” one-that each in its own context was a heartfelt response to the needs of the time.
Neither Fish nor Fowl
By 1960, the growth of the firefighting staff and its technology had finally rendered Station No. 1 obsolete. After some fifty years of service, Emeryville’s original firehouse was unceremoniously demolished, and on its site in 1963 was constructed a new Station No. 1. Designed during an era when the vitality of Modern architecture was already waning, Station No. 1 is an amalgam of late Modernist devices like “stack-bond” concrete block walls, false stone veneer, and decorative screen blocks. The building is typical of its era: attempting to uphold strict Modernist design doctrines, yet using purely decorative devices to relieve Modernist monotony, it ends up neither fish nor fowl. As a result, the second Station No. 1 is perhaps the most architecturally ambiguous of Emeryville’s firehouses. No longer in service, it was slated for demolition at this writing.
Modernism in Argyle
Emeryville’s newest firehouse, Station No. 3 at 2333 Powell Street, completes the stylistic cycle of these four buildings. Its exuberant use of color and pattern joyfully defies the ascetic dictates of Modernism. Like Bozo crashing a banker’s convention, Station No. 3 thumbs its nose at its stuffy Modernist predecessors. The new firehouse in fact draws inspiration from a riotous 130-year-old architectural style known as the High Victorian Gothic. which found great success in Britain and was later imported to the East Coast. Today, due to various obscure historic examples known mainly to architects, the High Victorian Gothic has entered a revival of sorts. Station No. 3’s varicolored brickwork (known to architects as “polychromy”), and the diagonal crisscross patterning on the tower (“diapering”) are both hallmarks of this style and are now rather frequently seen on commercial architecture. Unfortunately, many contemporary versions simply resemble Modernism in an Argyle sweater.
The real point, however, is not to categorize Station No. 3 as this style or that, but rather to note that it has “style” at all. Modernist architects eschewed the term “style,” believing that a building’s appearance should grow naturally out of its function. Yet despite the copious theorizing of these architects. Modernist buildings often functioned no better than their Revivalist predecessors and were often less interesting to boot. Hence highly ornamented architecture has once again come to the fore. So goes the cycle. Ornament, or no? Function, or style? The old firehouse, or the new? Declaring a winner in this stylistic shoving match may require the vantage point of another hundred years.
This story originally published in 1996 for the Emeryville Centennial Celebration and compiled into the ‘Early Emeryville Remembered’ historical essays book.
