Dal90′s comment last week provides a great description of why the STATE established a PAID fire department in Manhattan:

The formation of the Metropolitan Fire Department was two sharks attacking each other.

On one side you had the Democrat’s Tammany Hall in Manhattan that controlled the city government. The volunteer fire companies were — literally — the muscle for the ward bosses (and aspiring ward bosses).

While there were earnest reformers who saw the advantages of a paid fire department equipped with modern technology, what made it come about wasn’t an impetus from the city itself.

On the other side, the Republican controlled state legislature up in Albany saw it as an opportunity to screw with the Democrats. You can imagine the conversation over cigars, “How can we screw with them?” “Hmmm, you know I’ve heard talk of a paid fire department…we could take the authority to run a fire department away from New York City Hall and screw with the local ward bosses too by disbanding their volunteer companies!”

Thanks!

From 1857 to 1864 paid fire departments were established in St. Louis, Louisville (KY), Chicago, Richmond, Boston, Memphis, Indianapolis, Baltimore, Detroit, Nashville, Dayton (OH), Washington DC, and Covington (KY). Often the city outlawed volunteer firefighting within the jurisdiction.

TRANSITION FROM HAND-PUMPERS TO HORSE-DRAWN STEAMERS

While authorized for May 02, 1865, the transition to the Metropolitan Fire Department did not start until the Supreme Court affirmed the constitutionality of the law on June 23.  It took until November 3 to establish the MFD. New York Times article describing the transition HERE.

The fire suppression force protecting Manhattan went from 3,810 volunteers operating from

• 48 hand-pumper companies (Engine 8, Manhattan, operated a steamer)
• 57 hose companies
• 14 hook-and-ladder companies

… to 580 employees operating from

• 35 engine companies – a steam pumper and a hose wagon, both horse-drawn
• 12 hook-and-ladder companies – also horse-drawn

A foreman and assistant foreman are assigned to each steam engine and hook-and-ladder company. They are the company commanders. Each fire company has a total of 12 employees.

There were five hand-drawn engines and two hook-and-ladder companies staffed by 50 unpaid MFD members in the “suburban” Manhattan area.

First Year Discipline at MFD

The paid workforce came from the volunteer ranks.
Some of the 580 employees struggled with the requirements of municipal employment.

253 instances of charges against members were investigated:

• 52 firefighters dismissed
• 19 resigned while on charges
• 4 officers were demoted
• 82 were suspended without pay (one to ten days)

One foreman and three firefighters died during fire operations in 1866.

Arson in 1866

Manhattan experienced 30 fires a month in the last quarter of 1865. This was consistent with fire experience reported in the 1852 and 1854 annual reports. Under the volunteer system, the Chief Engineer estimated that half of the 385 fires in 1854 were incendiarism and one quarter by carelessness.

1866 represented the first full year of Metropolitan Fire Department operations.

They had a fire rate twice as high as the year before, handling 798 structure fires, with 57 resulting in the entire loss of the structure, including this fire at the Academy of Music.

Academy of Music - 1866 (NYPL digital gallery)

The Academy of Music at 125 East 14th Street at Irving Place was a 4,000 seat opera house built in 1854, burned in 1866, rebuilt in 1868. It was the center of social life for the wealthy. The 1926 movie theater that replaced the opera house became a nightclub in the 1980s. In 2001, New York University built the Palladium Residence Hall on that site.

It is not clear if the increased workload reflects the rapid growth in Manhattan or a dramatic arson increase. The chief fire marshal declared 45 of the 798 structure fires in 1866 “suspicious.”

next week: Reorganizing firefighting operations

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Mike worked on a project about Reconstruction after the Civil War
This is one in a series of articles about the Metropolitan Fire Department established in Manhattan in 1865.

Mike “FossilMedic” Ward