Engine Company 258, Ladder Company 115
10-40 47th Avenue | also 10-38 47th Avenue | Long Island City | built 1904
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The city photographed every building for its tax records around 1940 and again in the 1980s. NYC Municipal Archives.
Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.
- 1902
Bradford Lee Gilbert designs a step-gabled Dutch Renaissance Revival firehouse
Gilbert, whose Tower Building of 1887-89 is credited as New York's first skyscraper, received this commission in late 1902; it was his only job for the New York City Fire Department. The four-and-a-half-story front, more than 50 feet wide, is laid in Flemish bond brick with burnt headers and metal cant bay windows, and its tall step gable recalls 17th-century work in Holland and the city's Dutch colonial past.
“Engine Company No. 258 was built near the end of Gilbert's career and was his only commission for the New York City Fire Department.”
- 1904
Engine 158 and Ladder 65 get a new $60,000 firehouse on East 8th Street
Long Island City's first professional fire companies, formed in 1891, had shared a two-story brick building on Jackson Avenue that the Brooklyn Eagle called overcrowded and dangerous. The department acquired this lot on East 8th Street, now 47th Avenue, in 1902, and with Herman F. Lippe & Brothers as contractor the house for both companies and the battalion chief was completed in 1904. The companies took their present numbers, 258 and 115, in 1913.
- 1997
The Queens Historical Society names the firehouse a Queensmark
The Queens Historical Society picked the firehouse as one of several Hunter's Point buildings it called Queensmarks, a label for places of outstanding architectural, cultural or historical significance. A circular medallion marking the honor was installed between the two apparatus bays.
“In November 1997, it was one of several buildings in Hunter's Point identified by the Queens Historical Society as a "Queensmark" ... a circular medallion was installed between the apparatus bays.”
- 1999
The firehouse becomes a filming location for the television drama Third Watch
Beginning in 1999 the firehouse appeared as a location in the television drama Third Watch, the Landmarks Preservation Commission noted in its 2006 report. The two companies kept working out of the building, which by then had served Long Island City for more than a century.
- 2006
The city designates the Hunter's Point firehouse a landmark
The Landmarks Preservation Commission designated Fire Engine Company No. 258, Hook and Ladder Company No. 115 after a May 16, 2006 hearing where three witnesses, from groups including the Municipal Art Society and the Historic Districts Council, backed it. The commission had first heard the case in April 2001, and ranked the building among the city's best firehouses.
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