NY Times 6/13/09
Q.
When did New York City use fire horses to
pull its firefighting equipment?
A. Horses, and the heavier, more powerful steam engines they were needed to pull, did not appear in large numbers in the city until after 1865. That is when the paid Metropolitan Fire Department was created and began absorbing smaller volunteer departments, whose firefighters largely pulled their own machinery and pumped their own water, according to “F.D.N.Y., an Illustrated History of the Fire Department of the City of New York.” (New York City Fire Museum).
The 1890s and early 1900s were probably the heyday of the classic teams of fire horses racing to blazes with their steam pumpers and ladders. Fire horses worked 7 to 15 years on average, and figured prominently in firehouse life, where they were treated like royalty. “Many a fireman, who from overwork and fatigue has fallen asleep at the patrol desk in the small hours of the morning, has been saved from punishment for neglect of duty by an intelligent horse who, springing forward as the electrical signal comes, dashes to the patrol desk and awakens the sleeper,” Alfred M. Downes wrote in a 1907 book, “Fire Fighters and Their Pets.”
The Fire Department bought its first car, a Locomobile, in 1901, so Chief Edward Croker could get to fires faster. The first motorized fire engine came along in 1909. In the teens, the department began buying motorized fire engines by the dozen. According to the Fire Museum book, Engine Company 205 in Brooklyn made the last run by a horse-drawn engine, on Dec. 20, 1922. MICHAEL POLLAK
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