The Niagara Engine House is located on North Hamilton Street in downtown

Poughkeepsie Poughkeepsie ( ), officially the City of Poughkeepsie, separate from the Town of Poughkeepsie around it) is a city in the U.S. state of New York. It is the county seat of Dutchess County, with a 2020 census population of 31,577. Poughkeepsi ...

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States New York may also refer to: Film and television * '' ...

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

. It is a brick building constructed in the early 20th century, the only extant fire house of the six engine companies that once protected the city. It was designed by local architect Percival M. Lloyd in a late application of the

Gothic Revival Gothic Revival (also referred to as Victorian Gothic, neo-Gothic, or Gothick) is an architectural movement that began in the late 1740s in England. The movement gained momentum and expanded in the first half of the 19th century, as increasingly ...

architectural style An architectural style is a set of characteristics and features that make a building or other structure notable or historically identifiable. It is a sub-class of style in the visual arts generally, and most styles in architecture relate closely ...

. In 1982 it, along with two other old Poughkeepsie firehouses, was listed 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 ...

Building

The firehouse is a brick building three stories high with three to five

bays A bay is a recessed, coastal body of water that directly connects to a larger main body of water, such as an ocean, a lake, or another bay. A large bay is usually called a gulf, sea, sound, or bight. A cove is a small, circular bay with a narr ...

in each story. The front facade faces east. Beneath the flat roof is a projecting

cornice In architecture, a cornice (from the Italian ''cornice'' meaning "ledge") is generally any horizontal decorative moulding that crowns a building or furniture element—for example, the cornice over a door or window, around the top edge of a ...

and brick

frieze In architecture, the frieze is the wide central section part of an entablature and may be plain in the Ionic or Doric order, or decorated with bas-reliefs. Paterae are also usually used to decorate friezes. Even when neither columns nor ...

with blue squares on which "Niagara" is spelled out. It is supported by large

brackets A bracket is either of two tall fore- or back-facing punctuation marks commonly used to isolate a segment of text or data from its surroundings. Typically deployed in symmetric pairs, an individual bracket may be identified as a 'left' or 'r ...

alternating with smaller ones.

Fenestration Fenestration may refer to: * Fenestration (architecture), the design, construction, or presence of openings in a building * Used in relation to fenestra in anatomy, medicine and biology * Fenestration, holes in the rudder of a ship to reduce the w ...

is varied. The third-story windows have pointed arches. The central window on the story below is a projecting

bay window A bay window is a window space projecting outward from the main walls of a building and forming a bay in a room. Types Bay window is a generic term for all protruding window constructions, regardless of whether they are curved or angular, or r ...

with a

castellated A battlement in defensive architecture, such as that of city walls or castles, comprises a parapet (i.e., a defensive low wall between chest-height and head-height), in which gaps or indentations, which are often rectangular, occur at interva ...

top and diamond-shaped lights. Above the first story is a molded stone cornice with letters spelling out "1810 NIAGARA 1909". A stone

course Course may refer to: Directions or navigation * Course (navigation), the path of travel * Course (orienteering), a series of control points visited by orienteers during a competition, marked with red/white flags in the terrain, and corresponding ...

separates the first and second stories. Brick

pilaster In classical architecture Classical architecture usually denotes architecture which is more or less consciously derived from the principles of Greek and Roman architecture of classical antiquity, or sometimes even more specifically, from the ...

s frame the main garage door. The interior retains its tiled floor, brass pole and flooring.

History

The

engine An engine or motor is a machine designed to convert one or more forms of energy into mechanical energy. Available energy sources include potential energy (e.g. energy of the Earth's gravitational field as exploited in hydroelectric power gen ...

company that became Niagara was organized in 1810, as the building facade suggests, but did not start going by that name until 1847. Six engine companies are known to have been in service during the city's history. This is the only one whose building is extant. In 1909 local architect Percival M. Lloyd, who had earlier designed the eclectic Lady Washington Hose Company building a few blocks to the south on Academy Street, was hired to build the new one. His building includes many features of the Gothic Revival II style, which was used for many public buildings in the early 20th century ... the projecting central bay, roof castellation, stone lintels with drip molding and arches, the stone course between the two lower floors and a mock stone basement at ground level. A private ambulance company moved into the lower floor after the fire department left the building. They left its features intact.

References

{{NewYork-struct-stub Defunct fire stations in New York (state) Fire stations on the National Register of Historic Places in New York (state) Gothic Revival architecture in New York (state) Fire stations completed in 1909 Buildings and structures in Poughkeepsie, New York National Register of Historic Places in Poughkeepsie, New York

Building

History

See also

References