City of Sydney Fire Station: No. 1 Station, Castlereagh Street, 1888

Walk down Castlereagh Street from Park Street towards Bathurst Street and, just past the shops, there's a red brick building with three big arched doors and a fire engine usually parked behind one of them. Most people hurry past it on the way to work. It's worth slowing down, though, because this is the City of Sydney Fire Station, No. 1 Station, at 211 to 217 Castlereagh Street. It opened in 1888 and it has been turning out to fires ever since. Fire and Rescue NSW and the Sydney Open program both describe it as the oldest fire station in New South Wales that is still operating.

The 1888 front of the City of Sydney Fire Station at 217 Castlereagh Street. Photo: Sardaka, 2017, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Before there was a fire brigade

For the first fifty years or so of the colony, fighting fires in Sydney was a patchy business. Fire and Rescue NSW's own history says that in the 1820s the only real fire brigade in New South Wales was a military one, soldiers trained to use the fire appliances. Then the insurance companies stepped in. Fire and Rescue NSW dates the first insurance brigade, set up by the Australian Insurance Company, to 1836; the Museum of Fire puts the start of insurance brigades in Sydney at 1837. Either way, these early crews were mostly local working men using buckets, ladders and axes supplied by the companies.

The Museum of Fire makes a point that surprised me. In England, insurance brigades had a reputation for letting a building burn if its owner hadn't paid them, and each insured building carried a "fire mark", a metal plaque with the company's badge on it. Sydney had fire marks too, for the Phoenix, the Sun, the Alliance and others, but the Museum says local brigades put out fires whether a building was insured or not. The Buildings Act of 1837 paid 30 shillings to the first brigade to get water on a fire, 20 shillings to the second and 10 to the third. You can imagine the races that caused through the streets.

In 1841 a group of businessmen formed the Mutual Fire Insurance Association, and Fire and Rescue NSW says they brought out two engines and two firemen from England, Thomas Bown and Edward Harris. In 1851 the insurance companies joined forces as the Insurance Companies Fire Brigade, also called the Sydney Fire Establishment, with a Bown as superintendent. The brigade's station stood in Bathurst Street, on the corner of George Street, opposite St Andrew's Cathedral.

The volunteers came next. In 1854 Andrew Torning formed the No. 1 Volunteer Company, also known as the Victoria Theatre Brigade, and helped start a string of others. The Museum of Fire notes that "volunteer" isn't quite the right word, because these men were paid for their work. It also says the story that volunteer companies sprang up because insurers refused to fight fires is a myth; the truth was that insurers wouldn't cover certain risky businesses at all, theatres, printing presses and breweries among them.

The old Insurance Companies Fire Brigade station in Bathurst Street, the brigade's first home in 1884, photographed in 1901. The bell tower is empty because its bell had gone to Bathurst by then. Photographer unidentified, via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).

The insurance men and the volunteers did not get along. In 1880, after years of squabbling, two rival bodies were set up, the Metropolitan Associated Fire Brigades and the United Volunteer Fire Brigade Association. The Dictionary of Sydney says the first of these tried to bring the commercial and volunteer brigades together, but it was distrusted in many quarters and plenty of volunteer companies stayed independent.

The Garden Palace, 1882

I've written about the Garden Palace elsewhere on this blog, so I'll keep this short. The great exhibition building in the Domain burned to the ground in 1882, and the Illustrated Sydney News put the fire on a supplement dated 25 October 1882. It happened before the Metropolitan Fire Brigade existed and before a brick of the Castlereagh Street station was laid, so it was the insurance and volunteer brigades who were there that night. It's often told as one of the fires that showed Sydney needed a single, properly run fire service, but I couldn't find a source I'd trust that draws that link directly, so take it as the general feeling of the time rather than a recorded fact.

"Burning of the Garden Palace, Sydney", a supplement to the Illustrated Sydney News, 25 October 1882. Gibbs, Shallard and Co., State Library of NSW, via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).

One brigade for Sydney: 1884

The answer to all that rivalry was the Fire Brigades Act of 1884. The Dictionary of Sydney and Fire and Rescue NSW both date the formation of the Metropolitan Fire Brigade to 14 February 1884. Gary Boyce's detailed history of the station, written in 2010 from the brigade's own archives and State Records, says the new Fire Brigades Board was gazetted on 24 June 1884. It had six members: a chairman appointed by the government, and representatives of the Sydney Municipal Council, the suburban councils, the volunteer firemen and the insurance companies who were paying for a large share of it. Every brigade in Sydney now had to register with the Board and meet its standards to stay in business. The Museum of Fire says many of the fully volunteer brigades couldn't meet the rules and were soon replaced by brigades the Board approved.

The man put in charge of the firefighting itself was William Douglas Bear. The Museum of Fire's account of him says he was born in Woolwich in April 1849, joined the Royal Navy at fourteen, and at twenty-three went into the London Metropolitan Fire Brigade, where he rose to Third Officer and Engineer. Eyre Massey Shaw, chief of the London brigade, recommended him for the Sydney job, and he arrived in June 1884. His first and hardest task, the Museum says, was getting the insurance men and the volunteers to work as one brigade.

The first permanent crew of twenty men started on 1 July 1884. According to the Museum of Fire, all but four of them came straight across from the Insurance Brigade. Three came from the No. 1 Volunteer Company and one, Henry Salter, came from the London Fire Brigade; he was made Superintendent of the Adelaide Fire Brigade only nine months later. Bear himself reported, Boyce writes, that his permanent staff was thirty men "including Superintendent, Secretary, and Coachman", and he was proud that the brigade had "three horses, instead of two" as the old insurance brigade had.

The trouble was where to put them. The brigade was squeezed into the old insurance brigade station in Bathurst Street, which Bear called "totally inadequate to the requirements of the Metropolitan Brigade", while the Board worked from temporary offices on the corner of Bridge and Phillip streets. The plan was for three main stations: a central headquarters, a northern one and a southern one.

Building the head station

The government bought the Castlereagh Street land in two lots. Fire and Rescue NSW says the site on the western side of Castlereagh Street was bought in July 1884 for £10,000. Boyce, working from State Records, gives a little more detail and a slightly different total: one lot held the office of the Protestant Standard newspaper, bought from W.H. Paling and A.H. McCulloch for £5,000, and the other held the Royal Standard Hotel, bought from C.J. Royle for £5,500. He places the purchase in the Board's report for 1885.

Getting it built was a saga. Boyce says the first successful tenderers, White and Coghill, realised they'd quoted too low and pulled out. The Board, which thought the original design too expensive anyway, used the chance to strip back the ornament. The next builders, Millet Bros, won the job at £13,150, started knocking down the old buildings and then went broke. A change of ministry and a dissolved parliament added more delay, and the Board's chairman Charles Bown had to remind the government that the brigade was only in Bathurst Street "on suffrance". Finally John Baldwin's tender of £12,999 was accepted and work began late in 1886. Meanwhile the brigade didn't wait: the Museum of Fire says its first suburban station, at Marrickville, was open by April 1886, and Fire and Rescue NSW notes that this, not Castlereagh Street, was the first station actually built for the brigade, even though Castlereagh Street got the number 1.

Boyce writes that the building was finished by 17 February 1888 and the brigade moved in on 1 March. Most sources give 1888 as the opening year, though Fire and Rescue NSW's own history of the station calls it "the 1887 building", presumably after the year most of the building work was done.

Metropolitan Fire Station No. 1 in Castlereagh Street, with horse-drawn appliances out the front. The photo is undated. Government Printing Office, State Records NSW, via Wikimedia Commons (No known copyright restrictions).

James Barnet's plain fire station

The design came out of the Colonial Architect's office under James Barnet, the man behind the General Post Office, the Lands Department building and, as it happens, the Garden Palace. Boyce points out that Castlereagh Street was Barnet's only fire station and much less elaborate than his other work. That was deliberate. Barnet's first plans of February 1885 were in the Victorian Italianate style, with a big asymmetrical tower and rounded arches, and the Board told him it was too dear. Its secretary, Andrew Bone, wrote that the station "should be of plain a style as possible". So the tower became a lighter one set back from the front to keep things symmetrical, the bracketed eaves went, the rounded arches over the engine doors became flatter segmental arches, and the balustrade and skyline decoration were dropped. What was left is what the heritage people call Victorian Free Classical. Boyce, quoting a 1988 National Trust survey, says it's one of only two Sydney fire stations in that style. The State Library still holds Barnet's photo-lithographed plans, dated 23 February 1888.

Even pared back, it has some lovely touches. Over the middle engine door the keystone carries a bust of Queen Victoria, and the keystones over the two outer doors are carved with a fireman's helmet, axes, torches and other gear. Inside, the tiles in the engine bay carry fire brigade motifs too.

Queen Victoria keeps watch from the keystone over the middle engine bay door. Photo: Sardaka, 2018, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

One of the outer keystones, carved with a fireman's helmet, axes and torches. Photo: Sardaka, 2018, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Fire and Rescue NSW says the design borrowed ideas from the London Metropolitan Fire Brigade, which makes sense with Bear supervising. Charles Bown called it "one of the finest and modern of its kind" and "a model of completeness".

How the station worked

This is the part I find fascinating. The ground floor had three engine bays opening straight onto Castlereagh Street, with the stables behind them across a courtyard, so the horses only had a few steps to go. Fire and Rescue NSW describes the harness and swing bars hanging over each horse on weights running in tubes; when the collar was snapped shut the gear tripped itself and the horse went straight into the engine bay.

The nerve centre was the watchroom on the northern side of the ground floor, where the telephone exchange board, fire alarms and electrical gear were worked. Pull the electrical contact there, Fire and Rescue NSW says, and it rang the bells through the whole building, turned up the gas lamps in the engine bay, released the stable doors so they flew open on springs, and dropped a weight in the single men's quarters on the first floor that opened two flaps over the brass pole so the men could slide down. Speaking tubes ran from the watchroom to the Superintendent's office. The original switchboard has been restored and sits in a replica watchroom at the Museum of Fire in Penrith.

Up top was the watchtower. Fire and Rescue NSW says junior firefighters did three-hour shifts from dusk till dawn on a tower about twenty metres high, known as the "pigeon box", watching for a glow over the rooftops.

The Castlereagh Street station around 1900, with a horse-drawn engine in the street. Tyrrell Photographic Collection, Powerhouse Museum, via Wikimedia Commons (No known copyright restrictions).

Living over the shop

Firemen in those days didn't go home at the end of a shift, because there wasn't really an end to a shift. Boyce, drawing on Debra Jopson's history of the firefighters' union, says the men were on duty twenty-four hours a day for seven days straight and then had twenty-four hours off. So they lived at the station, or in rented places close by if there was no room. They couldn't leave without an officer's permission, and a lot of the work was menial, including cleaning the officers' quarters and gear. No wonder, as Boyce notes, so many early firemen were ex-sailors; he compares the station to an "onshore ship".

The building showed the pecking order. The Superintendent had nine rooms on the northern part of the first floor with his own bathroom and kitchen. The Foreman, his second in command, had a smaller flat on the floor above. The firemen had interconnecting bedrooms with shared kitchens, bathrooms and laundry. When it opened, Boyce says, citing the Sydney Morning Herald of 2 March 1888, it housed the Superintendent, the Foreman, five married men and eight single men, with four more married men in cottages nearby. There was a billiard room on the ground floor and a boardroom on the first, and the washing was hung out to dry on the roof.

Families grew up in places like this. Boyce quotes a retired fireman, Lew Phillips, who was born above a watchroom and was one of twenty-two children living in a fire station. Marie McCarthy, daughter of fireman John McCarthy, lived at Headquarters from 1910 to 1916 and wasn't sentimental about it: of the seven fire stations her family had lived in, she said, only two were reasonable and "the other five were unacceptable".

The Museum of Fire has a lovely story about Bear from an old Sunday Times piece of 1920. In a public place one night he boasted that the Sydney brigade was the equal of any in the world, New York included. Some Americans laughed at him, so he marched them to the nearest street fire alarm and told one of them to pull it. Within moments, the story goes, steamers, salvage wagons and ladder carriages arrived with hoses out. The Americans assumed the station must be just around the corner, so Bear called a cab and had it drive them there, to show them how far it really was. The Museum is careful to call this part of the "mythology" around Bear, and so will I.

Metropolitan Fire Station No. 3 at Circular Quay, one of the three main stations planned in 1884. State Records dates the photo to about 1890; the Museum of Fire says the station opened in 1893. Government Printing Office, State Records NSW, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0).

Alfred Webb and Nicholas Sparks

Bear resigned in September 1898. His successor was Alfred Webb, who the Museum of Fire says was Superintendent of the Metropolitan Fire Brigade from 1898 to 1909 and then the first Chief Officer of the NSW Fire Brigades from 1910 until 1913. A 1958 note quoted by the Firefighter Championships, written when Webb's family gave a trophy in his name, says he was chief officer "from 1888 to 1913", but the Museum's own dates are backed up by Bear's resignation in 1898, so I'd go with those. The Alfred Webb Cup is still awarded to the top team at the state firefighting championships.

Webb's right-hand man was Nicholas George Sparks. The Australian Dictionary of Biography says he was born in Portsea in 1857, served in the navy and joined the London brigade in 1881. He arrived in Sydney in June 1897 with his wife and two daughters and, as third officer, moved into the Castlereagh Street headquarters. He became deputy in November 1898. The ADB says that between 1898 and 1914 Webb and Sparks turned the Sydney brigades into a disciplined, professional force with the latest motorised appliances. When Webb died in 1913, Sparks took over as chief officer. (His name turns up as both Sparks and Sparkes; the ADB uses Sparks.)

Metropolitan Fire Brigade firemen in 1905, two of them in smoke helmets. State Records NSW (NRS 15454), via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0).

Hordern's, July 1901

The worst fire of Webb's early years was the Anthony Hordern's fire in the Haymarket on Wednesday 10 July 1901. Hordern's was then a complex of five big buildings around Gipps Street (now Barlow Street), Parker Street, George Street and Pitt Street. A retelling in Sydney's Daily Mirror of 20 August 1985 says the fire started at about 8.20 in the morning when an electric wire fused in the basement toy department of the Palace building and set celluloid toys alight. Within four minutes, it says, the first horse-drawn steamer came galloping round the corner from fire brigade headquarters with Superintendent Webb on board.

A strong westerly carried the flames across the narrow streets between the buildings. Deputy Superintendent Sparks followed a storeman, William Farrell, into the burning furniture building to warn men working a hose on the fifth floor, and both were badly burned getting out. Five Hordern's employees died, among them the upholsterer Harry Clegg, who was trapped on the parapet and jumped in front of the crowd. When people panicked that the gasometers next door would explode, Webb had already ordered the gas company to pump the gas back to its Mortlake works. At the inquest, the Mirror says, Webb told the coroner that even fifty engines, rather than the ten he had, couldn't have saved the store. The paper says the fire led to tougher safety rules for city buildings and a stronger fire brigade.

Firefighters at work on the Anthony Hordern's fire in the Haymarket, July 1901 (a stereo pair). State Library of NSW (ON5/31), via Wikimedia Commons (No known copyright restrictions).

Another stereo view of the Hordern's fire, July 1901. State Library of NSW (ON5/30), via Wikimedia Commons (No known copyright restrictions).

Growing out of the building

By the early 1900s the 1888 station was bursting. In 1902 Charles Bown complained that "procrastination is accentuating the evil" and that what had been enough fifteen years earlier was now "utterly inadequate". Boyce puts the government's foot-dragging down partly to the 1890s depression. Fire and Rescue NSW says the station's workshops had already been enlarged in 1893.

The first big addition was next door at 211 Castlereagh Street, a three-storey brick building that became known as the "Boot Factory". Fire and Rescue NSW says it was leased in 1902; Boyce says the Board rented it year to year from 1902 and took a twenty-one-year lease in 1904. The brigade made boots, uniforms, hoses, rope lines and canvas there, and for a while unmarried firemen slept there. The Board bought it in 1923.

The trams came up Castlereagh Street in 1902 and, Boyce says, their rumble played havoc with the alarms in the watchroom, so in 1909 the watchroom moved into the old billiard room and the billiard table went to a gym in the Boot Factory.

Here the sources part ways on the big northern extension. Fire and Rescue NSW and the Sydney Open listing date it to 1907. Boyce, working from council planning records and the Board's annual reports, says the land at 213 to 215 Castlereagh Street was bought from the Countess of Carnarvon in 1909 for £4,675, that the building application was lodged on 14 June 1912, and that the new "Administration Building" by the architects Spain, Cosh and Minnett was built by Wall and Sons for £9,668 and occupied in August 1913. I can't settle that one from here, so you have both.

From horses to motors

In 1910 the Fire Brigades Act took effect across the whole state. The Fire Brigades Board became the Board of Fire Commissioners of NSW, the Metropolitan Fire Brigade became the NSW Fire Brigades, and the Superintendent became the Chief Officer. Castlereagh Street went from being the head station of a Sydney brigade to the headquarters of a statewide one.

Boyce says the horses finished at Headquarters in 1915. The 1888 stables lost their upper storey and were opened up to make two more engine bays. Then on 28 June 1927 Sydney and Newcastle firemen won an eighty-four-hour week, and a two-platoon system followed, so the men no longer had to live at the station. That freed up space. Boyce says the front of the Administration Building was changed in 1927 to take two vehicle entrances, under William McNiven, a probationary fireman of 1900 who became the brigade's first in-house architect; Fire and Rescue NSW dates the conversion to engine bays to 1928, for "an enlarged fleet of motorised appliances". Either way, the motor age had arrived on Castlereagh Street.

New gas masks being shown off at the Castlereagh Street headquarters in 1927. Photo: Sam Hood, State Library of NSW, via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).

The Museum of Fire has one more nice detail from these years. Thomas Nance joined the brigade in 1895 and spent his early years in the carpentry shop at Headquarters. In 1929 he became the first Australian-born Chief Officer, and he turned the southern basement of Headquarters into a workshop where he made toys for children.

Testing air raid sirens at Fire Headquarters, 22 February 1940. Photo: Ted Hood, State Library of NSW, via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).

A fire engine and its crew at Fire Brigade Headquarters, Sydney, 17 March 1941. Photo: R. Donaldson, State Library of NSW, via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).

The NSW Fire Brigade rescuing trapped office workers somewhere in the city, some time between about 1925 and 1939. Photo: Sam Hood, State Library of NSW, via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).

The station today

The need for a bigger station was raised as early as 1934, Fire and Rescue NSW says, but nothing happened for decades. Boyce notes that training moved out to a new college at Paddington in 1956 and the residential quarters were eventually removed altogether. In July 1999 an application went to the City of Sydney Council to refurbish the old buildings and add a new one. Boyce says the council preferred keeping a fire station on the site to seeing a tower go up, and a conservation plan limited new building to four storeys.

The Boot Factory was knocked down and a new station with modern engine bays was finished in February 2003. Fire and Rescue NSW says the foundation stone was laid by the Emergency Services Minister, Bob Debus, and Commissioner Ian MacDougall. Restoration of the 1888 building began in March 2003. Missing parts of the rear iron balconies were rebuilt, a 1920s infill over the old stables was taken off, and the First World War honour board, original tiles and doors were kept. Part of the ground floor became a small museum. The front, engine bays, front rooms and main staircase of the later northern building were kept too. Sydney Open credits Clare Design for the 2004 work.

As for heritage protection, Boyce records that the station is on the NSW Fire Brigades' section 170 heritage register, the list government agencies keep of their own heritage assets. The Australian Heritage Database, in its entry for Pyrmont Fire Station, says the Metropolitan Fire Brigade built the city's protection around five city stations, one central headquarters and one at each point of the compass, and names Castlereagh Street as one of only three comparable big early stations, though "redeveloped".

On 1 January 2011 the NSW Fire Brigades changed its name to Fire and Rescue NSW, and in 2017 its head office moved out to Greenacre. No. 1 Station kept doing what it has done since March 1888. The building opens its doors now and then for Sydney Open, and it's well worth the visit.

The station today: the 1888 building, the later northern addition and the 2003 building in one run along Castlereagh Street. Photo: Adam.J.W.C., 2009, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.5).

Next time you're waiting for the lights at Bathurst Street, have a look up at Queen Victoria over the middle door, and spare a thought for the young firemen up in the pigeon box, staring out over a city of gas lamps, waiting for a glow in the dark.