Lake Street Fire Station

United States historic place

Significant dates

Lake Street Fire Station
U.S. National Register of Historic Places
U.S. Historic district Contributing property


42°34′37″N 71°59′42″W / 42.57694°N 71.99500°W / 42.57694; -71.99500
Built	1884
Architectural style	Italianate
Part of	West Gardner Square Historic District (ID85003185)
NRHP reference No.	80001676^[1]
Added to NRHP	March 25, 1980
Designated CP	December 30, 1985

The Lake Street Fire Station is an historic fire station in Gardner, Massachusetts. Built in 1884 to house a school and a fire company, it served as a school for just a few years, and as a fire station until the 1980s. It is architecturally distinguished as a good local example of late Victorian architecture. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980,^[1] and included in the West Gardner Square Historic District in 1985.^[2]

Description and history

The former Lake Street Fire Station is located in downtown Gardner, occupying a parcel of land between Richmond and Central Streets, facing east toward a plaza that was once part of Lake Street, and the former Heywood-Wakefield Company Complex. It is a 2-1/2 story masonry structure, built out of red brick and covered by a gabled roof. Its ground floor main facade has four former equipment bays, now filled with large multipane windows and the building's current main entrance, and a former pedestrian entrance at the left. Each of these openings has a segmented-arch top, formed out of soldier bricks. The center bay has a projecting wood-frame oriel window, with a gable in the roof line above. The flanking windows are narrower, with segmented-arch openings that have shoulders and lintels of stone, and arches of soldier bricks.^[3]

The fire station was built in 1884, and originally housed a school on the second floor, which moved out in 1890. It also had a small lockup in the basement, which was later converted to a boiler room. The station originally had four bays for firetrucks, and a tower for drying hoses.^[3] The tower has been removed, and a modern addition added three truck bays to its left side (now housing the local visitors center).^[2]

References

^ ^a ^b "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. April 15, 2008.
^ ^a ^b "MACRIS inventory record for Lake Street Fire Station". Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Retrieved March 19, 2014.
^ ^a ^b "NRHP nomination for Lake Street Fire Station". National Archive. Retrieved July 22, 2018.

U.S. National Register of Historic Places in Massachusetts

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