The

Honolulu Fire Department The Honolulu Fire Department (HFD) provides fire protection and first responder emergency medical services to the City & County of Honolulu, Hawaii, United States, under the jurisdiction of the Mayor of Honolulu. Founded on December 27, 1850, by K ...

(HFD) operates their 44 Fire Stations on the Island of Oahu, and in and around

Honolulu Honolulu (; ) is the capital and largest city of the U.S. state of Hawaii, which is in the Pacific Ocean. It is an unincorporated county seat of the consolidated City and County of Honolulu, situated along the southeast coast of the island ...

. Seven current or former stations are on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

, of which five are still in use today as fire stations. By the 1920s, the accepted style for most public architecture in

Honolulu, Hawaii Honolulu (; ) is the capital and largest city of the U.S. state of Hawaii, which is in the Pacific Ocean. It is an unincorporated county seat of the consolidated City and County of Honolulu, situated along the southeast coast of the island o ...

, was Spanish

Mission Revival The Mission Revival style was part of an architectural movement, beginning in the late 19th century, for the revival and reinterpretation of American colonial styles. Mission Revival drew inspiration from the late 18th and early 19th century ...

or, more broadly,

Mediterranean Revival Mediterranean Revival is an architectural style introduced in the United States, Canada, and certain other countries in the 19th century. It incorporated references from Spanish Renaissance, Spanish Colonial, Italian Renaissance, French Colonial ...

. Five fire stations built on Oahu between 1924 and 1932 illustrate this stylistic congruence, despite being designed by three different architects.Penkiunas 1990, pp. 250–251 The prototype for all five appears to have been Palama Fire Station, built in 1901 and designed by

Oliver G. Traphagen Oliver Green Traphagen (3 September 1854 – 21 October 1932) was an American architect who designed many notable buildings in Duluth, Minnesota, during the late 19th century and in the Territory of Hawaii during the early 20th century. Among h ...

. Honolulu's Central Fire Station, remodeled in 1934, is larger but somewhat similar in style, although with

Art Deco Art Deco, short for the French ''Arts Décoratifs'', and sometimes just called Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design, that first appeared in France in the 1910s (just before World War I), and flourished in the Unite ...

embellishments. All seven buildings were added to the

on 2 December 1980, even though Palama Fire Station had been added separately on 21 April 1976. All seven fire stations are box-shaped, two-story structures, with engine bays on the ground floor and dormitories upstairs. All have drying towers, which were required for the cloth-covered rubber hoses of the era in which they were built, but which also serve as visual landmarks and decorative elements. The buildings are all of sturdy

masonry Masonry is the building of structures from individual units, which are often laid in and bound together by mortar; the term ''masonry'' can also refer to the units themselves. The common materials of masonry construction are bricks, building ...

, with white stucco walls and tiled roofs, in a Mediterranean style. The Waikiki Fire Station on Kapahulu Avenue followed a similar model when it was built in 1927, but it was extensively remodeled in 1963 to fit an evolving Hawaiian rather than Mediterranean style, so it was excluded from the National Register application.

History

In 1901, just after the devastating Chinatown fire of 1900, the city of Honolulu had three fire stations. The Central Fire Station at that time was a lava-rock building of two-and-a-half stories designed in 1896 by

Clinton Briggs Ripley Clinton Briggs Ripley (February 13, 1849 – February 13, 1922) was an American architect active in Honolulu, Hawaii, from the 1890s until the 1920s. Ripley was born in Peru, Maine. In 1871, he began his career in Chattanooga, Tennessee, form ...

and C.W. Dickey in the

Richardsonian Romanesque Richardsonian Romanesque is a style of Romanesque Revival architecture named after the American architect Henry Hobson Richardson (1838–1886). The revival style incorporates 11th and 12th century southern French, Spanish, and Italian Romanesque ...

style that dominated the downtown area at that time. The Makiki Fire Station was a two-story wooden building designed by Ripley and Dickey in 1899.Report of the Governor of the Territory of Hawaii 1901, p. 86Neil 1975, pp. 105-106 At the time he relocated to Honolulu in 1897,

had already designed many public buildings in

Duluth, Minnesota , settlement_type = City , nicknames = Twin Ports (with Superior), Zenith City , motto = , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top: urban Duluth skyline; Minnesota ...

. During the turn-of-the-century building boom after annexation, he soon became one of the busiest architects in the

Territory A territory is an area of land, sea, or space, particularly belonging or connected to a country, person, or animal. In international politics, a territory is usually either the total area from which a state may extract power resources or a ...

. When he was commissioned to design the Palama Fire Station in 1901, he gave it a Mediterranean look very different from that of the Romanesque Kakaako Pumping Station he had designed the previous year. However, the building boom faded soon afterward. Dickey relocated to

Oakland, California Oakland is the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, California, United States. A major West Coast of the United States, West Coast port, Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, the third ...

in 1905, and Traphagen followed in 1907, after the

1906 San Francisco earthquake At 05:12 Pacific Standard Time on Wednesday, April 18, 1906, the coast of Northern California was struck by a major earthquake with an estimated moment magnitude of 7.9 and a maximum Mercalli intensity of XI (''Extreme''). High-intensity sha ...

. The opening of the

Panama Canal The Panama Canal ( es, Canal de Panamá, link=no) is an artificial waterway in Panama that connects the Atlantic Ocean with the Pacific Ocean and divides North and South America. The canal cuts across the Isthmus of Panama and is a conduit ...

in 1914 set the stage for another building boom, as both tourism and migration helped fuel rapid growth during the 1920s. Many nationally known architects opened offices in the islands, and their designs often reflected a California regional style heavily influenced by the work of

Bertram Goodhue Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue (April 28, 1869 – April 23, 1924) was an American architect celebrated for his work in Gothic Revival and Spanish Colonial Revival design. He also designed notable typefaces, including Cheltenham and Merrymount for t ...

at the 1915 Panama-California Exposition in

San Diego San Diego ( , ; ) is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a 2020 population of 1,386,932, it is the List of United States cities by population, eigh ...

. Dickey reopened an office in Honolulu in 1920 and moved back to the islands in 1925. The new fire stations of the 1920s and 1930s more closely reflected California regional styles than did Traphagen's prototype in 1901. A new Central Fire Station was built in 1934, and is listed on the

Gallery

Image:Palamafirestation.JPG, Palama Fire Station (1901), architect

Image:Kaimukifirestation.JPG, Kaimuki Fire Station (1924), architect G. R. Miller Image:Honolulu-Kalihi-fire-station.JPG, Kalihi Fire Station (1924), architect G. R. Miller Image:Old-Kakaako-firestation-front-view.JPG, Old Kakaako Fire Station (1929), architect Solomon F. Kenn Image:Honolulu-Makiki-firestation-front.JPG, Makiki Fire Station (1929), architect Solomon F. Kenn Image:Waialua-firestation.JPG, Waialua Fire Station (1932), architect A. W. Heen Image:Honolulu-Central-Fire-Station.JPG, Central Fire Station (1934), architect C.W. Dickey Image:Honolulu-central-fire-station-doors.JPG, Central Fire Station (1934),

touches

Notes

References

*Neil, J. Meredith (1975). "The Architecture of C.W. Dickey in Hawai‘i." ''Hawaiian Journal of History'' 9:101-11

*Penkiunas, Daina Julia (1990). American Regional Architecture in Hawaii: Honolulu, 1915–1935. Ph.D. dissertation,

University of Virginia The University of Virginia (UVA) is a Public university#United States, public research university in Charlottesville, Virginia. Founded in 1819 by Thomas Jefferson, the university is ranked among the top academic institutions in the United S ...

. (Published by

UMI Umi or UMI may refer to: Geography * Umi, Iran, a village in Razavi Khorasan Province, Iran * Umi, Fukuoka, a town in Japan People * Umi-a-Liloa, king of the island of Hawaii *Umi Dachlan, Indonesian female artist *Umi Garrett, American female pian ...

, Ann Arbor, in 1993.) *Report of the Governor of the Territory of Hawaii to the Secretary of the Interior (1901

Washington: Government Printing Office.

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Fire Stations Of Oahu Government buildings on the National Register of Historic Places in Hawaii Hawaiian architecture History of Oahu Fire stations in Hawaii Buildings and structures in Honolulu Historic American Buildings Survey in Hawaii National Register of Historic Places in Honolulu