Self-Guiding Tour

#1   The Alarm Booth

This room, referred to as the “alarm booth”, is built into every fire station, and is located near the front door. This room served two purposes: to greet visitors that entered the station, and to receive word of an alarm. This room was always manned by one fire fighter “on the floor” when the crews were in the station.

Inside the booth is a device referred to as a “ticker tape” machine; named after the thin paper rolls the device used. Tickers were hooked up to street corner alarm boxes via telegraphs. When the handle on a street alarm box was pulled, its 4-digit location identification code was transmitted to every fire station, where it would be “tapped” out onto the paper. The firefighter in the booth would cross-reference the location code number with an alarm box location listing book on the wall. If the 4-digit code read that the alarm was in this station’s assigned district, the man on the floor would sound the alarm in the hall to initiate a response. If the code was not coming from a box in this station’s district, the man on the floor would mark the other station’s responding apparatus off duty on the wooden assignment board, now displayed on the outside of the booth.

The ticker tape machine was also hooked up to other systems within the station. When an alarm came in to this station’s assigned area, the activation of the local alarm would automatically open up the horse stall doors and the horses would assemble in front of their apparatus and beneath their harnesses. The harnesses were suspended on the ceiling and would be lowered and strapped onto them. At the same time, the gong would sound, alerting firefighters to report to the apparatus floor. Hot water would be dispensed into the boiler of the steamer from the basement boilers to speed up the process of heating the water to create steam for the pumper to work at the scene of a fire. This system meant the firefighters could be out the door within 14 seconds of an alarm being sounded.

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