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

For more than 30 years, the century-plus-year-old Fire Station No. 30 was home to the all-black Engine Company No. 30, at a time when LA’s fire stations were segregated by policy. This wasn’t the first LA fire station with an all-Black company based there, but it’s the oldest one still standing. So there’s a healthy dose of poetic justice in the fact that the building now houses the African-American Firefighter Museum, dedicated to preserving the history of Black firefighters, in LA and beyond. 

While this fire station’s segregated era is what the National Register considers its “period of significance,” the African-American Firefighter Museum is not a museum about racism, per se. Through text, photos and artifacts, it tells the much broader, still-evolving story of LA’s Black firefighters from the late 1800s through today. Yes, there are clear-eyed accounts of how institutional prejudice impacted Black firefighters. But you also get an immersion into the experience of living at a fire station. You see apparatus and uniforms from every era of firefighting history, and you’re introduced to the pantheon of men and women who ascended the ranks and achieved greatness, both before and after the LAFD was formally integrated in 1956.

Early History of Black Firefighters in LA

The history of Black firefighters begins with Sam Haskins, a part-time “callman” for the LA Fire Department. He was hired in 1888, just a couple years after fighting fires became a paid profession in LA. He also has the sad distinction of being the first LA fireman to die in the line of duty, after he was crushed under the wheels of a fire engine during a call in 1895. According to the Los Angeles Herald, LA City Councilman James Ashman was so moved by Haskins’ death, that six days later he proposed to the City Council “that the strength of the fire department be increased by the addition of a company to be composed exclusively of colored men” – a motion that “caused Councilman Munson who is the Republican leader, to gasp with astonishment.” Why the Herald focused on this motion as a sign of Ashman’s liberalism, rather than a means of segregation, I may never understand. Nevertheless his idea was approved in 1898, although there weren’t enough Black men to make up their own unit until 1902.

The second Black LAFD employee was George Bright, hired in 1897. As Bright rose up the ranks, the Department decided that it wasn’t tenable for White firemen to take orders from a Black lieutenant. So they moved all the Black firemen in the city to Hose Company No. 4, supervised by Bright – LA’s first segregated fire unit. They were based out of a (now-demolished) fire station on Loma Drive, in the Westlake neighborhood. 

In the 1910s and ‘20s, Westlake was an affluent, largely-White neighborhood. When Belmont High School was built in 1923, right across from the station, the Fire Department decided to move the all-Black Hose Company #4 out. According to historian Brent F. Burton, the Department had fielded concerns about White students seeing Black men in positions of authority. In 1924 they were transferred to Fire Station No. 30 at 1401 Central Avenue, along a corridor that was developing a sizable Black population (see my visits to the Dunbar Hotel and the 28th Street YMCA for more on Central Avenue). The No. 30 building already had a firefighting unit based there, since 1913, and the outgoing White firemen stationed there threatened to strike in revolt before they left.

The number of Black firemen in LA continued to grow in the ‘20s and ‘30s, which presented logistical difficulties for the segregated system. There wasn’t enough riding room on the regular fire trucks and engines, so the Fire Department had to assign a “heavy rescue” truck to Station No. 30, just to fit all the firemen. The station was getting crowded, so in the 1930s the LAFD added a second segregated unit, housed at Fire Station No. 14, further south on Central Avenue.

Black Firefighters in Mid-20th Century LA

While on one hand the two all-Black fire companies were points of pride for the Black community, segregation meant fewer professional opportunities for Black firefighters. Black men were prevented from rising higher than the rank of Captain, because the next rank, Battalion Chief, would give a Black firefighter authority over White firefighters. 

Things were changing culturally, too. The 1948 Shelley vs. Kraemer Supreme Court decision struck down racist housing covenants that barred non-Whites from living in many parts of LA. That contributed to an exodus of many Black families from the Central Avenue corridor by the early ‘50s. Brown vs. Board of Education ended segregation in schools in 1954, a year after the NAACP had petitioned the LAFD Fire Commission and Chief Engineer John Alderson (a proponent of segregation) to end discriminatory workplace practices and integrate the fire stations.

The 1950s were turbulent times for LA’s Black firefighters. The LAFD experimented with transferring 80 firemen from Stations No. 30 and No. 14 to all-White stations, but they were often ostracized, forced to do menial work and subjected to incredibly cruel hazing. Arnett Hartsfield, a legendary Black firefighter who served at Station No. 30 in the 1940s and early ‘50s, described his experience to the Los Angeles Times: 

“The captain met me at the door and gave me a direct order never to enter the kitchen when the white firemen were eating, to use my own pots and pans and to shower only when no whites were using the washroom…I was already an attorney, and every day I came to work and scrubbed toilets.”

–Arnett Hartsfield, quoted in his Los Angeles Times obituary

Hartsfield and a number of other Black firefighters from LA City and LA County banded together to found the Stentorians in 1954. Their goal early on was to protect each other against racist attacks by their white colleagues, and to fight for equal opportunity within the LA Fire Department. The Stentorians still exist today, and Hartsfield’s bust sits on a pedestal in the garden behind Fire Station No. 30. 

Though it took some awful transition years for LA’s Black firefighters, plus the retirement of Chief Engineer Alderson and a spate of bad press for the LAFD, the Department formally integrated all of its stations in 1956. 

Visit LAFire.com for photos of Fire Station No. 30 from after integration, between 1956 and its closure in 1980.

Fire Station No. 30 As Architecture

While of course it’s what’s inside the African-American Firefighter Museum that matters most nowadays, there’s plenty to admire about Fire Station No. 30 as a building. Designed by James Backus, Superintendent of Building for the City of Los Angeles, it presents a slight fantasy element detectable in the parapets and the Moorish arch to the left of the main entrance, and the corbels and pilasters add some decorative flair. All of these were present when the building was erected in 1913, as was the old cook’s house that still sits on its own at the back of the lot.

An arsonist did some damage in 1985, five years after the station officially closed. But it underwent a top-to-bottom restoration between 1995-1997, overseen by the respected architect Edward Fickett. In fact it was one of the last projects Fickett completed before he died. It earned an LA Conservancy Preservation Award in 1999.

Beyond the walls and fire poles, there’s not much at Fire Station No. 30 that survived the fire, water damage and a full-scale restoration, in addition to its 67 years of use. But it’s a faithful restoration. Aside from the placement of the big main doors (they used to be recessed, and were moved forward in 1941 to accommodate larger trucks), a missing cupola and an old hose-drying tower that was converted into an elevator shaft, this building is structurally very similar to how it looked when it was an active fire station. 

It’s not uncommon to find an old decommissioned fire station in LA, enjoying a second life as a bar, a recording studio, a restaurant or a youth arts center. Fire Station No. 30 is my favorite kind of adaptive reuse. The African-American Firefighter Museum honors both the building and the people that worked in it by preserving the history of both. 

The African-American Firefighter Museum is open on Sunday afternoons from 1-4 pm. Tickets are free with reservations – Visit their website for more info. If firefighting history is your bag, I can also recommend visiting: 1) the LA Fire Department Museum, housed in the historic Fire Station No. 27 in Hollywood and 2) the Ralph J. Scott fireboat in San Pedro.

Sources & Recommended Reading

+ African-American Firefighter Museum: “Museum History” (aaffmuseum.org)

+ Burton, Brent F.: “130 Years of Black Firefighters in L.A.” (Video – aafmuseum.org, March 19, 2023)

+ Crushed and Burned: Horrible Death of Fireman” (Los Angeles Times, November 20, 1895)

+ “Edward Fickett, Award-Winning Architect Built Showplaces (Los Angeles Times, June 19, 1999)

+ “Engine Company No. 30, 1401 Central Ave” (LA Fire Department Historical Archive)

+ Grimes, Teresa & Jay Fantone, Christopher A. Joseph & Associates: Fire Station No. 30’s NRHP nomination form

+ “History of the Black Firemen: The Segregated Years, October 1897 to September 1956” (LA Fire Department Historical Archive)

+ lacitystentorians.com

+ lacountystentorians.org

+ “The King Is Nearly Dead” (PDF – Los Angeles Herald, November 26, 1895 – via Wikipedia)

+ Woo, Elaine: “Arnett Hartsfield Jr. dies at 96; helped integrate L.A. Fire Department” (Los Angeles Times, November 3, 2014)