Bring Back The Old Doors, Say Firefighters

By Carl Glassman
JULY 3, 2006

The Engine 7/Ladder 1 firehouse on Duane Street turned 100 last year. It was an anniversary so special to the firefighters that they celebrated with a big block party, and some of them even helped produce a book about the firehouse’s illustrious history.

So it was particularly galling to the men when workers contracted by the Fire Department arrived last month to replace the house’s three old wooden doors with metal ones that look completely different—except, of course, that they are red. After one door had been replaced and another removed, work came to a halt. A distress call from one of the firefighters to Jean Grillo, who heads the Duane Street Block Association, led to phone calls to Community Board 1 and, because the firehouse is in the Tribeca East Historic District, the Landmarks Preservation Commission.

“I was taken with the fact that they came to me as the block association person,” said Grillo, who is also a public member of CB1. “This was not some cranky neighbor who walked by and saw some ugly doors. These are the firefighters themselves who say this is ruining their firehouse.”

Steve Olsen, a firefighter with Ladder 1 who is the company’s unofficial historian, said workers came to the firehouse more than a year ago to measure the doors for replacements and they assured him that the new ones would resemble the old ones, with their four rows of six windows. Finally, the doors arrived, Olsen said, and, “Boom, they’re changing the whole appearance of the house and making it look like a factory.”

Capt. George Palacio of Ladder 1 appeared before Community Board 1 last month to lobby against the new doors.

“If I’d been a captain in the Navy they would have painted my ship pink,” he told the board. “Please, save my ship from being pink.”

Palacio said he was told by the Fire Department that the doors were being replaced because of a “safety issue.”

“The doors come up, the doors go down,” he said. “We’ve never missed a run. I don’t know what the safety issue is.”

Seth Andrews, a Fire Department spokesman, insisted that the old wooden doors were wearing out. “You can’t have doors going up and down with the potential of something coming off the door and hitting someone in the head,” he said.
Andrews said the Fire Department and the Landmarks Preservation Commission agreed that the new doors should be appropriate for the building. “The Fire Department will always abide by the rules and regulations of the Landmarks Commission,” he said.

Lisi de Bourbon, a spokeswoman for the commission, said that after the work stopped, Fire Department officials called the commission seeking its advice on an appropriate design for the new doors.

The two agencies met on June 29 and the Fire Department is expected to present a revised design to the commission. “We’re helping the Fire Department come up with a solution to keep the doors in character with the rest of the building,” de Bourbon said.

Olsen said he was uncertain when the old doors were installed, but they are not original fixtures from the 1905 firehouse. The first ones opened like barn doors and probably were replaced with the current doors when motorized equipment replaced horses, he said.

For now, the old doors are being stored in the firehouse yard.

“I don’t know what we’ll do with them, maybe hang one on the back wall,” Olsen said. “At least it will be preserved.”