Head to Los Angeles Plaza Park on any day but Monday and you can visit a small firefighting museum housed in the Plaza Firehouse: the first official fire station in LA, erected in 1884. It was built during a transitional era for the city’s firefighters – they were an all-volunteer team at the time, led by a paid Chief Engineer who would train the men to work the horse-drawn hose and pump apparatus. It wouldn’t be until 1886 that firefighting became a paid profession.

Since it was vacated by the Fire Department in 1897, the old Plaza Firehouse became a saloon, cigar store and poolroom; later on it was a restaurant, a Chinese market and what the more charitable among us would consider a flophouse.

This story of the construction, abandonment and adaptive reuse of fire stations is one that was repeated many times over in downtown LA. Firefighting technology was changing rapidly in the early 20th century, and horse-drawn equipment soon gave way to fully-motorized vehicles.

So let’s take a look at two historic downtown fire stations from the same era that are still with us. They were built in similar contexts, just 12 blocks away from each other, but have had very different paths.

#207: Fire Station No. 23📍225 East 5th Street

Added to the National Register of Historic Places on June 9, 1980

The old Fire Station No. 23 in Skid Row is surrounded by dingy shops, selling cheap electronics and wholesale toys. Its west side is covered in graffiti, much of the marble facing is gone from the bottom floor, and enough pieces are missing from the marble arch over the entryway that only “E 23” is left from the original “ENGINE 23 TRUCK CO.” lettering. Looking at it today you’d never know that this building used to be the most opulent fire station in the city, if not the country. 

Fire Station No. 23 was built in 1910 to serve as the LA Fire Department’s new headquarters. For about 18 years, it was the home of Chief Engineers Archie Eley and Ralph J. Scott, who lived on the third floor with their families during their respective tenures. As the seat of the department’s power, of course this station would be elevated beyond the norm. Quite literally: this was the first three-story station in LA. It was also the first to employ reinforced concrete, the same material that made up many of the buildings left standing after the massive San Francisco earthquake of 1906.

The architectural firm of Hudson & Munsell (designers of the Natural History Museum) designed an ultra-luxe building for the new Fire Department HQ, inside and out. Italian marble, decorative stonework and terra cotta on the facade, bracketed by tooth-like quoins on the edges. Two elevators to go up, six brass poles to slide down. White oak trim and tile wainscoting on the second floor where the men slept, played cards and ate. And up on the third floor, where the fire chief resided? Oak floors and leatherette walls, mahogany trim and a big bay window looking out over the neighborhood. The pipes were copper, the doorknobs brass. Even on the toughest of workdays, Fire Station No. 23 must have been a relief to return to. 

Was Fire Station No. 23 too nice? After a honeymoon period in 1909-1910, during which the press called it “…one of the finest engine houses in the country” and “the handsomest fire house in [the] West,” the station’s public image took a turn. An LA City Councilman decried the place as a nearly-$60,000 waste of taxpayer money, and even Fire Commissioner C.O. Hawley went on record explaining that the station’s opulence chafed him too – despite the FIre Commission and the Mayor having approved the plans. Soon after, we got this magnificent piece of tongue-in-cheekery;

It is the interior which is to reincarnate man and beast in the fire department. It is the interior which is a sort of Nirvana for a soulful legion of blue-shirted civil service graduates…. 

After inspecting the two upper floors you will naturally ask if the firemen are to wear dress changes morning, noon and night. This has not been arranged yet, but it is likely that the house captain will wear evening dress after 6 o’clock, at least, while the orderly at the entrance will perhaps wear knickerbockers.

-SYBARITICAL EFFORT, THIS. Los Angeles Times (September 29, 1910)

The controversy died down after the station opened in late 1910, and the firefighters of Fire Station 23 performed admirably over the next half century. This was one of the last stations in LA to be outfitted for horse-drawn fire buggies, and it witnessed the changeover from the 19th century model into a modern, fully-automated fire fleet. The department’s first specialized rescue squad was based out of Fire Station No. 23 in the ‘30s and then again from 1949 onwards, trained to make quick entries and save people trapped in burning buildings. 

Some 1100 firemen answered 60,000 alarms during the 50 years that No. 23 was open. But by 1960 the station was obsolete. Engine Co. 23 and the rescue and salvage squad moved to a new facility at 7th and San Julian, just four blocks away. 

Fire Station No. 23 spent a few years of the ‘60s housing the Fire Department’s Medical Liaison and Training Sections, and then Skid Row claimed it as its own. Vandals stripped the station of its copper pipes and doorknobs; even the firepoles disappeared. In 1974 LA’s Department of Public Works threatened to tear it down, mistakenly assuming it was built of “unreinforced brick” and therefore an earthquake hazard. The Fire Department gently reminded them it was one of the first reinforced concrete buildings in the city, and countered that it should be turned into a firefighting museum, this time at no cost to LA taxpayers. 

As the years dragged on, the museum dream floated away (we’d eventually get a great firefighting museum inside a different historic station in Hollywood). An artist and contractor named James Croak rented the station from the Fire Department beginning 1978 with the understanding that he would restore it himself. Croak began leasing the building out for film productions, too. Wim Wenders shot his 1982 film Hammett here, and the bottom floor stood in as Ghostbusters HQ in three films from the franchise. A second artist/caretaker named Daniel Taylor continued the tradition when he moved in in 1985; while he was living there, the station had cameos in Big Trouble in Little China, The Mask, David Lynch’s Lost Highway and dozens more.

In 1996 another plan arose to repurpose Station No. 23 when LA voters approved Proposition K, a measure to acquire and construct youth-oriented spaces like parks and rec centers. As part of the measure more than $2 million was earmarked to transform the station into a youth arts center. There was no movement for more than 20 years. But in 2018 we saw a glimmer of hope, as the city announced it was in the plan check phase of a restoration, and shared renderings from architects Brooks + Scarpa for a new arts center. 

Finally, in late 2023, the LA Bureau of Engineering shared pictures of progress being made on the interior – just in time, as the Proposition K funding would have disappeared in 2026. After a full retrofit is complete, the idea is to convert the ground floor into exhibit spaces, where the fire apparatus used to be stored. Upstairs in the former living quarters will be classrooms and spaces for art programming.

When I stopped by in late April 2024, a large crew was cleaning up on the still very-much-under-construction bottom floor. Here’s hoping that the next time I stop by, there are kiddos working on papier-mache sculptures where horses once slept in white-tiled stalls. 

Sources & Recommended Reading

+ Brooks + Scarpa: “Fire Engine Co. 23 Youth Arts Center, Los Angeles, CA” (brooksscarpa.com)

+ “Engine Company 23 and Truck Company 5, 225 East Fifth Street, 1910 to 1921” (LA Fire Department Historical Archive)

+ “Engine Company 23 and Truck Company 5, 225 East Fifth Street, 1921 to 1960” (LA Fire Department Historical Archive)

+ “The Firehouse from ‘Ghostbusters’” (IAmNotAStalker.com, February 12, 2010)

+ Grenier, Judson: “Plaza Firehouse Centennial” (PDF – via LA Public Library, 1984)

+ Himmel, Neison: “Postscript: ‘Palatial’ Firehouse of 1910 Will Be Rescued From Neglect” (Los Angeles Times, October 11, 1979 – via ProQuest)

+ “L.A. Fire Station Ends 50 Years of Service: Hose Wagon Was Drawn by Horses When Engine House 23 Started Operations” (Los Angeles Times, November 21, 1960 – via ProQuest)

+ Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce: “History of Downtown Los Angeles’ ‘Skid Row’” (PDF)

+ “Over a Century of Service” (LAFD.org)

+ Savko, Michael, Los Angeles City Fire Department: Fire Station No. 23’s NRHP nomination form

+ Sharp, Steven: “Youth art center taking shape in historic Fire Station No. 23 in DTLA” (Urbanize LA, November 10, 2023)

+ Simross, Lynn: “City Officials Hope Museum Idea Catches Fire: Restoring Historic Firehouse to Former Grandeur Is Goal” (Los Angeles Times, January 26, 1982 – via ProQuest)

+ “Sybaritical Effort, This: New Engine-House Gorgeous Inside and Out.” (Los Angeles Times, September 29, 1910 – via ProQuest)

#208: Fire Station No. 28 📍644 South Figueroa St

Added to the National Register of Historic Places on November 16, 1979

Fire Station No. 28 was completed in 1913. Like many public buildings of the early 1900s, the station looked to classical models for its stately exterior. Architects J.P. Krempel and W. E. Erkes imbued a touch of the Renaissance in the brickwork that covers the front of the building, and the molded cornices above the first and third floors. Though the facade reads as “orderly” rather than “fancy,” with just a few crafty details poking through to elevate it: the three ornate modillions (projecting bits) near the top, and the way the brick patterns shift to zig-zags above the windows. The arches above the third floor windows make ‘em look like a pair of owls, peeking at passersby on Figueroa; those corner towers on the roof might be their ears. 

Photos from its first few years of existence show Fire Station No. 28 surrounded by other buildings in compatible revival styles. Today, it’s one of the only buildings from its era still standing in the commercial heart of downtown. Most of its neighbors are skyscrapers and more modern construction. 

Fire Station No. 28 is important as a visual vestige of an earlier era of downtown, and its history also speaks to the development of the LA Fire Department. This station came around as LA was swapping out horse-drawn firefighting trucks and apparatus for motorized replacements – keep in mind that California’s first drive-in gas station was also introduced in 1913, just a few minutes away. Early on, a lot of time was spent training the firemen of No. 28 to drive, and testing out new apparatus on wheels. Like the six-cylinder Seagrave Hose Wagon (equipped with 1000 feet of 2 1/2 inch hose) and a Gorham Pumper, which could spit 1380 gallons per minute and cost the city $10,000 – about 20% of the cost of the station itself!

In a report from the middle of 1912, Chief Engineer Archie J. Eley wrote “I urgently recommend that a Manual Fire Alarm System be installed without delay, with Central Station at the new engine house to be erected at Seventh and Figueroa Sts. And that the City own its own conduits and wires, thereby doing away with leased wires as at present, and that 350 Fire Alarm Boxes be purchased, to properly cover the City.” 

Eley’s plan was to add a modern fire alarm dispatch bureau on the third floor, with the alarm conduits themselves in the basement of Fire Station No. 28. It would be a big upgrade from the moldering system in the old City Hall. According to a 1969 article in The Fireman’s Grapevine by Captain John F. Rooney, that alarm system was never installed; instead the third floor was used over the years as quarters for the Arson and Photo Units, the Relief Association and the Credit Union, and the basement was occasionally a practice space for the Fire Department Band. 

Fire Station No. 28 was decommissioned in 1967, and its Engine Co. and rescue/salvage squad moved to other stations. In the next couple decades a few different ideas were floated as to what should happen to it. The station’s National Register application from 1979 mentions three of them: 

1. Use the second floor as part of the Community Redevelopment Agency’s “Pedway” system of elevated walkways around downtown’s commercial district
2. Demolish the building and replace it with a skyscraper
3. Convert it into an arts center

None of those things came to pass. Since the late ‘80s, it’s been a restaurant called, appropriately enough, “Engine Company No. 28.” The menu apparently used to feature regional cuisine served at firehouses around the US, though I can’t imagine that prawn cocktail, scallop ceviche or veal chops were standard fare for firemen on city salaries. The building’s current owner, criminal defense attorney Mark Geragos, has a table permanently reserved for him at the front of the restaurant.

When I visited in late April 2024, I was there mostly for the history. There’s plenty to see: the brick floor leading to the kitchen and bathrooms is over a century old, a lot of the dark wood bureaus look original, and the same brass fire pole that the firemen used to slide down still connects the floor to the pressed tin ceiling, though the hole on the second floor is closed up now. Photos and memorabilia from LA’s firefighting history adorn the walls. 

It’s honestly heartwarming to see how much care the restaurant’s owners put into preserving the space. And the mushroom and asparagus risotto is sublime. 

Sources & Recommended Reading

+ Biele, Hugh I.: Fire Station No. 28’s NRHP nomination form

+ “Engine Company No. 28, 644 South Figueroa Street, 1913 to 1969” (LA Fire Department Historical Archive)

+ “Our Story” (EngineCo.com)

+ Reichl, Ruth: “Engine Co. No. 28 Finally Up to Speed” (Los Angeles Times, April 2, 1989)

+ Rooney, Captain John F.: “ENGINE 28 – Telling It Like It Was . . .” (The Fireman’s Grapevine, August 1969 – via LAFire.com)