Individual Rooms, Tiled Baths and Open Fireplace Make $95,000 First Ward Station
More Luxurious Than Old-Timers' Wildest Visions.

Except for a famous saloon fire 40 or more years ago in Cranston, when volunteer hose wagons went loaded with hose and came back loaded with beer, there has been no event in that city's history calculated to make more persons envious of firemen than the completion of the new First Ward station at Park and Warwick avenues this week.
The structure will cost approximately $95,000, and will not be put into service for a week or ten days, but apparatus has been installed, and a temporary crew placed in the structure, Cranston's third permanent fire station. The building is believed to be not only the most modern, but the most comfortable fire station in the State.
Nobody ever heard of an open fire in a fire station. Most fire department officials would hesitate to tolerate such a thing for fear that some forgetful rookie might turn a three-inch hose on it some evening. But the Cranston fire department committee, comprising Councilmen Harold W. James, Walter E. Palmer, Earl H. Potter, Eugene F. Bennett and Albertus M. Colvin, decided that a fireplace and a twisting flame on a winter's night would do much to relieve the monotony of a 24-hour-a-day duty. Accordingly, the lounging room of the new Edgewood station includes oak-finished bookcases on either side of a brick fireplace, comfortable chairs, and several tables.

Individual Rooms

The comfort of the men has been further safeguarded by building of interior rooms, which may be locked in the day time, and each one of which is furnished with a bed, chair and a roomy dresser in which suits may be hung, shoes stored, and shirts, collars and handkerchiefs placed. Sleep will be assured every hoseman and ladderman in the station as long as the bell is silent, for the truckmate's to sit up a little late and read or a neighbor's cough may only be indulged in the privacy of his own room. This arrangement will do much, it is held by the Cranston fire committee, to preserve the morale of men on duty day and night for six days in the same company.
The bedrooms are arranged around an open room lighted by two skylights, and this room will be left without furniture, so that in response to midnight alarms, no obstacles will lie between the bedrooms and the two poles down which firemen are wont to play follow-the-leader when the gong starts tapping.
Another room in the building which makes even city officials feel the faintest "firebug" bite is the washroom and lavatories. This little room, done in white porcelain and slate, will accommodate six firemen bent on shaving in the morning, and four showers are at one end of the room. If you ever belonged to a volunteer fire company back 40 years ago, and came home from a two-hour battle with a thick coating of dirt, grease, ice and soot from the ears down, you would turn a vivid green in the new Cranston station. You might have sneaked a bottle of beer out of a burning saloon, but today's Cranston firemen would rather come back to a hot shower and a warm sanitary room.

Fixtures Luxurious

The fixtures, lights, window design, walls, hardware and equipment in the new station are of the type ordinarily found in expensive office buildings. The entire first floor is of glazed brick, and on entering the station, the first view of a man on desk duty, with the fire alarm tape machine ticking off at deliberate intervals and a telephone handy.
After the public opening and inspection of the building, visitors will be received in the manner that a hotel clerk addresses a guest. You may conduct personal or official business in the station, but it is not a street corner.
The firehouse is equipped with an American La France 1000-gallon pumper and a city service ladder truck of the same make. Both cost $13,000, and were delivered to the city this month. When tapped into service, they will be manned by 11 men and three officers, two of them lieutenants and one captain. The station will protect First Ward residential sections and is within short distance of the Bellefonte industrial district.

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The building itself, at Park and Warwick avenues, has not been formally opened but apparatus has been placed and a temporary crew quartered there. At left above is the lounging and recreation room, showing fireplace and bookcases. The drop gives a view of the second floor and shows the individual bedrooms grouped around pole leading down to the truck room. Each room contains a bed, chair, dresser, radiator and has two windows.