Firehouse Mini Park

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HOURS

4 a.m. - 11:30 p.m.

ABOUT THE PARK

“Help! Rescue me!” pleads a little girl pretending to be trapped on the second story of a gaily colored tree house. This double-decker with fire pole is the favorite in this tiny park, but there are other things packed in here too: a boxed-in play area, drinking fountain, benches, and a maple-shaded promenade leading to a heptagonal wading pool. This park’s small trees also make it a good cooling off place for pedestrians overheated by walking among large buildings.

(Excerpt from "Enjoying Seattle's Parks" by Brandt Morgan)

HISTORY

Firehouse was No. 23, built c.1910, last equipment run in 1964, due to the construction of a larger facility on a site better located to serve the expanded service area. The station housed horse-drawn and then motorized equipment.

Seattle’s Fire Dept. was born in the ashes of the Great Fire of 1889, a hopeless battle by the valiant and courageous Volunteers using primitive equipment and water supplies. They had only two tiny steam pumpers, hand-drawn hose carts, hand-carried ladders, buckets and axes to fight a fire in a “tinder town” of wooden buildings and streets with water from a system of hollowed fir logs plus springs. The Volunteers became the fire’s scapegoats and disbanded in disgust. The Department used horse-drawn equipment until the 1920’s.

(Edited from the files of Don Sherwood, 1916-1981, Park Historian.)