Added to the National Register of Historic Places March 17, 2009

When I visited LA Fire Station No. 14 earlier this year, the six-year-old boy in me was thrilled to encounter a fire truck turning from 34th Street onto Central Avenue in South LA, then pulling backwards into the station with its lights flashing (see video below). Totally mundane thing, happens many times a day. But this station’s history is anything but mundane. From 1936 to 1956, Fire Station No. 14 was one of two all-Black stations in the city. It became a battle ground in LA’s reckoning with its segregated past, at a time when America was heading towards an integrated future.

The current Fire Station No. 14 was opened in 1949. It was built right next to the old Victorian-style station that had housed Engine Company 14 for the preceding 50 years, back to its horse-drawn days. Here’s a picture of the old and new stations together in 1950, right before the old one was demolished: 

Back at the turn of the 20th century, there were very few Black firefighters in the LA Fire Department. The first was Sam Haskins, a former Virginia slave who was hired in 1888. It would be another nine years before the second, George Bright, was hired. As Bright rose in the ranks to Lieutenant, the Fire Department decided in 1902 to put him in charge of an all-colored unit, instead of requiring white firefighters to take orders from him. In 1924, the all-Black Hose Company No. 4 (under Bright’s supervision) was moved out of their station in the affluent, mostly-white Westlake neighborhood and installed at a newly-segregated Fire Station No. 30 on Central Avenue, near the Fashion District. The departing white firemen of Station No. 30 threatened to strike in revolt.

As more and more Black men joined the LAFD, Station No. 30 became overcrowded. So in 1936, Station No. 14 – just down Central Avenue from No. 30 – turned into the second all-Black station. Repeating the pattern of 12 years prior, the outgoing white firemen left the place covered in trash and human excrement. 

The next two decades were transitional years for LA’s Black firemen on Central Avenue, as they evaluated how the segregated system was working for them. On one hand, an all-Black fire company was a point of pride for the Black community that had flourished around Central Avenue in the ‘20s and ‘30s. On the other, the opportunities for Black advancement were very few with only two possible companies to work for, and segregation meant that civil service regulations had to be violated just to fill vacancies with new Black applicants. Some older firemen preferred the current system. Many younger Black firefighters called for integration, and the NAACP and local Black papers agreed with them. 

By the end of WWII, the demographic situation in South LA was changing. The 1948 Shelley vs. Kraemer Supreme Court decision struck down racist housing covenants that barred non-whites from living in many parts of LA, and by the early ‘50s Blacks were leaving the neighborhoods around Central Avenue in droves. 

Against this backdrop, in 1953 the NAACP submitted a petition to the LAFD Fire Commission and Chief Engineer John Alderson (a documented proponent of segregation), alleging discriminatory practices that violated Blacks’ constitutional rights. The pressure was raised the following year, when Brown vs. Board of Education struck down segregation at schools. 

In late 1954, Alderson began to experiment with transferring small numbers of Blacks from Station Nos. 14 and 30 to all-white stations. Things didn’t go well. The Black firemen were treated as second class citizens and excluded from most station activities; at Station No. 10, Black firefighters were subject to severe hazing and harassment. There’s a story from No. 10 of some white firemen using the pillowcase of their Black colleague Ernie Roberts as toilet paper, then putting it back on his bed so he’d be forced to lie his head in human shit. Arnett Hartsfield founded a group of Black fireman called the Stentorians to provide round-the-clock protection against racist attacks by their white colleagues. Fearing bloodshed, Alderson transferred the Black firemen back to stations Nos. 14 and 30 by December without the approval of the Fire Commission, and was nearly fired as a result.

After a year of tensions and steady bad press about the LAFD’s discrimination (and the racism of many of its employees), Chief Engineer Alderson retired. His replacement William Miller took a more practical approach toward integration, first uniting eight Black firemen from Nos. 14 and 30 with eight white men unopposed to integration at Station No. 7. When that trial run worked, Miller began to disperse the remaining Black firefighters across 17 different LA stations. This second attempt at full integration wasn’t without its hiccups, but it took this time around, just as the Civil Rights Movement was hitting its stride throughout the country.

A final note: while this building’s architecture is way less intriguing than its social history, it’s worth a paragraph. If Fire Station No. 14 reminds you of a whole lot of other fire stations in Los Angeles, there’s a good reason for that. In 1947, LA voters approved a bond issue that earmarked $4.5 million for the construction or remodeling of fire stations, and the upgrading of vehicles and gear. No. 14 was part of the first wave of stations to be rebuilt, and like a lot of them, it was designed in one of the popular municipal styles of the day: the international style, characterized by flat surfaces devoid of ornamentation, horizontal bands of windows and very little color. Its architects Earl T. Heitschmidt & Charles Matcham were also responsible for Station No. 8 in Westlake. By himself, Matcham drew the plans for No. 86 in North Hollywood.

Sources & Recommended Reading

+History of the Black Firemen (Los Angeles Fire Department Historical Archive)

+LA Fire Station #14’s NRHP nomination form

+Fire Station 14 Photo Gallery (Los Angeles Fire Department Historical Archive)

+LA Citywide Historic Context Statement: Post World War II Fire Stations, 1947-1963 (SurveyLA, 2017)

+Historic-Cultural Monument Application for the Fire Station 14 (LA City Planning, 2021)

+The African American Firefighter Museum website