Friday, October 30, 2009
Old Roanoke fire station now houses an architecture firm
The building may forever be a fire station, but its new inhabitants embrace its rich legacy.
JARED SOARES The Roanoke Times
After renovating the site, Interactive Design Group invited current and former firefighters to visit the old Roanoke Fire Station No. 3 on Thursday.
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The bright blue, gray and white paint on the walls -- even the walls themselves -- are new at the former Roanoke Fire Station No. 3. But memories of working at the Sixth Street Southwest building go back decades.
Interactive Design Group, the new owner, welcomed retired and current firefighters back to the old firehouse at a dedication ceremony Thursday. The building at 301 Sixth St. S.W. in Roanoke's historic automotive district was put into operation as a firehouse April 12, 1909. Back then, horses pulled the trucks, and eight men tended to fires. For 98 years, it served the city.
The 12-year-old architecture firm bought the two-story brick building in January for $171,000 and renovated the first-floor interior. The firm moved from the Warehouse Row Business Center in September.
"As soon as things started going on, the medics and firefighters in the city started stopping by," said Jill Hume, IDG's chief financial officer. "Our doors are open to them always. It is their house, ultimately."
Capt. Alvis Kelley, 82, hadn't been back to the firehouse since it closed in 2007, when the city opened the new Fire-EMS Station No. 1 at Franklin Road and Elm Avenue.
He still remembers where he slept when he worked there for 15 years, though: in the hayloft on the second floor. The rope to lift the bales still hung in the door frame.
"I had to come today, I spent so many years here," he said. "I'm so glad to see the firemen. It means a lot that a lot of them showed up."
Kelley and his wife, Mary Lou, 63, of Floyd County stood near the front of the crowd at the dedication outdoors, occasionally looking back at the red and gold 1927 engine No. 1 on display behind them.
He had driven that truck, he said, in his first two weeks on the job, when Harris Hardwood had a fire.
He started as a lieutenant at the station in 1952 and retired from firefighting 32 years later, he said.
After Bill Hume, IDG's president, spoke to the crowd from a podium next to the front entrance, he invited the guests inside.
Kelley, dressed down in a wind jacket and baseball cap, and his former chief, Robert Guthrie, in a suit, climbed to the second floor. They remembered where the beds once stood in the now-vacant space.
"They used to have Sunday school over there," Guthrie, 82, of Roanoke County said, pointing to where a piano used to sit across the room, next to his former quarters. He was stationed at the firehouse from 1965 to 1982, and hadn't been back since.
The firm made its reception desk in the lobby out of the old boiler from the basement. Across from the desk, a decommissioned firefighting uniform, complete with helmet and boots, sits on display where the fire pole once was. The pole isn't there any longer, but IDG architect Steven Feather plans to replace it eventually.
"I remember my dad for my whole life fighting fires," said Jill Hume, whose father was a charter member of Burnt Chimney Volunteer Fire Department in Franklin County. "For everyone else here, it's an architectural gem."
Feather designed the new interior, and Roanoke's Thor Inc. handled construction. "It's a firehouse, it will always be a firehouse, we're just currently home to this," Bill Hume said at the dedication ceremony.
Hannah Brown, the 11-year-old daughter of deceased city fire Capt. Christopher Brown, raised the flag as men in uniform -- about half the crowd -- stood at attention, remembering their former home away from home.
