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    New York City Firefighting:: 1901-2001
    New York City Firefighting:: 1901-2001
    New York City Firefighting:: 1901-2001
    Ebook192 pages29 minutes

    New York City Firefighting:: 1901-2001

    By Steven Scher

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    About this ebook

    The story of firefighting in New York City is one of danger, tradition, pride, excitement, and tragedy. It is also the story of man's triumph over destructive forces. From the gaslight days of horse-drawn steam engines to the World Trade Center tragedy of 2001, the heroic men and women who make up the city's most dynamic public service have risked and often lost their lives in order to protect and serve the people of New York City.New York City Firefighting: 1901-2001 chronicles the proudest fire department in America. The proximity of buildings in the city streets and the construction materials made each fire especially dangerous, but determined firefighters never hesitated to battle the flames and rescue the victims. Later, facing unprecedented heights and unparalleled danger, firefighters in New York City were called upon to battle infernos in the first skyscrapers, often using the most rudimentary equipment and barely protected from the flames. In its most trying moments, the Fire Department of New York responded to the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in 1993 and 2001, dutifully rushing into the towers to save as many lives as possible and ultimately losing hundreds of their own.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateSep 18, 2012
    ISBN9781439628331
    New York City Firefighting:: 1901-2001
    Author

    Steven Scher

    Author and photographer Steven Scher was born and raised in the Bronx. He has been photographing fires and firefighters for forty years. He served as a fire alarm dispatcher for the FDNY and was its deputy press secretary. A photographer for Mayors Ed Koch and David Dinkins and an honorary deputy chief, Scher has written numerous articles on the history of the fire department.

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      New York City Firefighting: - Steven Scher

      others.

      INTRODUCTION

      New Yorkers in the 18th and 19th centuries had a real romance with firefighting. The volunteer firemen, selected by the General Assembly for being able, discreet, sober men, were an elite group and enjoyed an elevated status. Each volunteer company had a piece of apparatus individually named, painted, and funded by a group of financial patrons. Ballads were often written about their exploits.

      When the cry of fire! echoed through the streets of early New York, relaying the alarm from block to block, residents of the closely packed wooden houses would toss the leather buckets they were required to have out their windows to the brigades of volunteer firefighters below. The buckets would be gathered by the volunteers as they ran to the scene of the fire. Other volunteers would race dozens of blocks to the fire, pulling fire pumpers with such affectionate names as Old Brass Backs, the White Ghost, and Red Rover.

      Much value was placed on getting first water on a fire. Competition and pride among the various volunteer companies was intense. Different companies often collided on the way to a fire, and brawls sometimes prevented any water from reaching the flames. Out of this tradition of bravado and teamwork, the paid New York Fire Department was born in 1865.

      The paid department was to be governed by a board of commissioners. The four commissioners (Martin Brown, Philip Engs, James Booth, and Charles Pinckney) had a fire department consisting of 13 chief officers and 552 other members. They worked a continuous tour of duty, with three hours a day for meals and one day off a month. Firefighters were paid $700 a year. The chief engineer (an early name for the chief of department) made $3,000. Horses to draw the apparatus, steam engines, and a telegraph system were quickly put in place. Elisha Kingsland was appointed the first chief engineer. After a reorganization in 1866, a military man, Gen. Alexander Shaler, was named president of the board of commissioners. His reorganization of the department was modeled after the military, a model that stands to this day.

      In 1898, the areas around Manhattan were consolidated into the New York City we know today. All of the smaller separate fire departments with their own personnel, equipment, and telegraph alarm offices became one: the Fire Department of the City of New York (FDNY).

      In 1901, New York City was only three years old. Although much larger, the city and its fire department had not changed too much. Steam fire engines and wooden aerial ladder trucks were still pulled by horses. Telephones had been in use for two decades, but the department still relied on telegraph and bells for alarms. The photographic images of the first few years of the 20th century give us a good idea of what the FDNY looked like in the late 19th century as well.

      One

      1901–1939

      The fire department was in transition at the beginning of the 20th century. Horses, gaslights, wooden aerial ladders, and ornate helmets characterized the FDNY in 1901. By the 1940s, the department and the city had grown—not outward, as in the late 19th century, but upward. Early skyscrapers, such as Rockefeller Center and the Empire State Building, began to redefine the New York skyline. Subways and the addition of millions of residents made for some interesting years for the FDNY as well.

      In 1901, Fire Commissioner John J. Scanell, having been appointed by Mayor Robert A. Van Wyck, found himself with a fire department of 1,400 firefighters. However, the FDNY had to protect one and a half million people and 252 square miles more than it had just

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