Engine Company 7 / Hook & Ladder Company 1 Firehouse

104 Duane Street | also 100 Duane Street | Tribeca | built 1905

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The lot about 1940
About 1940. Via 1940s.nyc
The lot about 1985
About 1985. Via 80s.nyc

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.

  1. 1905

    Trowbridge & Livingston design a three-bay firehouse for an enlarged engine company and a ladder company

    The firehouse at 100-104 Duane Street was designed in the Beaux-Arts style, then called "modern French," by Trowbridge & Livingston. Its wide three-bay front answered a practical need: two bays for an engine company that now ran two steam engines, and a third for Hook & Ladder 1. The companies had shared a firehouse in City Hall Park since 1851. The city picked Duane Street for its closeness to government and to protect the tall buildings rising around the park. It became a landmark in 1993.

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  2. 1905

    December 31

    Engine Company 7 and Hook & Ladder Company 1 move into the new Duane Street firehouse

    The two companies moved in on New Year's Eve 1905. The building had three bay doors, two for Engine 7's apparatus and one for Hook & Ladder 1, with the companies' quarters on the second floor and the top story reserved for municipal use, including a courthouse. On January 5, 1906, The Sun reported that Engine 7 had been made a double company to give better protection to the dry goods district.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  3. 1913

    April 11

    Fireman William Scofield of Engine 7 bites the fuse off a bomb in the Jefferson Theatre

    Scofield was responsible for inspecting public venues in the downtown district, and on the night of April 11, 1913 he was checking the new Jefferson Theatre on East 14th Street while about 1,500 people watched a film upstairs. In the basement he found a bomb with a sputtering fuse and about six inches left. He dropped to one knee, put the fuse in his mouth and bit it off. The plain brown paper around the bomb was marked with the Italian word for death, "Morte."

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  4. 1957

    June 17

    The Fire Department Museum opens in the Duane Street firehouse

    In 1956 First Division Headquarters left the building for Lafayette Street, and in May 1957 Hook & Ladder 1 shifted to the center bay to make room for a fire museum. Eleven pieces of antique apparatus, including an 1810 gooseneck engine, were moved in around April 30. The museum opened on June 17, 1957 and stayed until 1987, when it moved to 278 Spring Street.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  5. 2001

    September 11

    Jules Naudet films from the firehouse on September 11 as Engine 7 loses no one

    The French filmmaker Jules Naudet was at the firehouse making a documentary about a probationary firefighter. On the morning of September 11 he was taping Battalion Chief Joe Pfeifer on a gas-leak call when the first plane hit the north tower. According to author David Friend, all 55 of the house's firefighters escaped alive, and the firehouse came to be called the Miracle house. Engine 10, which lost its Liberty Street home that day, then lived at 100 Duane Street until October 2003.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

Further reading

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