Quincy, Mass. Historical and Architectural Survey

160 Copeland Street (West Quincy Fire Station)

HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE
The history of fire protection in Quincy began in 1644 when all townspeople were ordered, have a ladder leaning up against their chimneys. In 1792, just after Quincy became a town, the "Quincy Fire Society" was formed among the inhabitants for the mutual protection of each other's property in case of fire. In 1812 Quincy acquired a hand pump, its first major piece of fire apparatus. The first act to establish a Fire Department in Quincy was accepted at the Town Meeting in 1854. The $3800 purchase of a steam pump, a house for its shelter and piping the streets was approved by the town meeting in 1878. The present Quincy Fire Department was established under Quincy's first ordinance after the town had obtained a charter to become a city and was approved March 4, 1889.

The new West Quincy Fire Station of 1939 was built on the same Copeland Street site as the earlier West Quincy Fire Station of 1893. The formal dedication was attended not only by the Mayor of Quincy, Thomas S. Burgin, but by the Fire Commissioner of the City of Boston, William A. Neilly.

Boston arcbitect George Ernest Robinson was the designer of the 1939 West Quincy Fire Station. Apparently his first station in Quincy, the Central Station at 26 Quincy Avenue, completed in 1938, was a marked success for he went on to design not only the West Quincy Fire Station, but the Quincy Point Fire Station, 615 Washington Street, in 1941 and the Squantum Fire Station, 86 Huckins Avenue, in 1943. The local contractor for the West Quincy Station was John Hamre & Son.

BIBLIOGRAPHY and/or REFERENCES
Building Permit.
William Churchill Edwards. Historic Quincy, Massachusetts, 1957, p. 217.
Historical Sketch of the City of Quincy, Quincy Lodge of Elks, 1924.
Paul Robert Lyons. Quincy: A Pictorial History, 1983, p. 162.
Robert N. Mood. QFD: A History of Municipal Fire Protection in the City of Quincy, 1976, p. 69.
Quincy Patriot Ledger, 100th Anniversary. January 7, 1937, p. D-10; May 19, 1939.
Scrapbooks belonging to Robert N. Mood, City of Quincy Fire Historian.

ARCHITECTURAL SIGNIFICANCE:
This fire station was designed a year after the construction of the Central Fire Station by George E. Robinson, a Boston architect who had built a number of fire stations thoughout New England. He continued to use the popular Colonial Revival style, this station being a modest version of the Quincy Avenue station which he also designed. Residential in scale, it has a facade of five bays over two segmental arch fire engine openings decorated with a constrasting keystone. A raised brick string course separate the two floors. The hip roof is pierced by two tall chimneys. It is a fine institutional building of Quincy, evoking the general interest in the regional revival architecture of the 1930s.

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