Former Hook and Ladder Company 106 firehouse
124 Greenpoint Avenue | Greenpoint | built 1910
Open on the map6 entries
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.
- 1869
Brooklyn's Hook and Ladder Company 6 is organized at 124 Greenpoint Avenue
The nyfd.com company history lists Hook and Ladder Company 6 of the Brooklyn Fire Department as organized on September 15, 1869, at 124 Greenpoint Avenue, the lot where today's firehouse stands. It describes the company as one of the first truck companies equipped as the department began active service. Its house, later rebuilt, stood on ground earlier held by the volunteer department's Valley Forge Engine 11.
Source: nyfd.com
- 1880
An Italianate brick firehouse is built for the company in 1880 and stands for three decades
Brownstoner reports that a new Italianate brick firehouse was built on this site for the hook and ladder company in 1880 and stood until 1909, when the present limestone building replaced it. A period photograph shows its firemen, all but one of them Irish and one a Scot, who lived and served in Greenpoint. Their record includes industrial blazes at box factories, sugar factories, bakeries and bagging factories, as well as house and tenement fires.
Source: brownstoner.com
- 1883
Hook and Ladder Company 6 loses two men beneath falling walls at the Herseman bakery fire
The nyfd.com company history says the Herseman bakery fire stayed fresh in the minds of Hook and Ladder Company 6, quartered on Greenpoint Avenue near Manhattan Avenue. Acting Foreman Jonathan Tyack and George Haight, temporarily detailed to the company, died under falling walls there. Stephen Allen, later the company's foreman, was badly burned and bruised at the same fire on June 22, 1883, and was laid up for nearly six months.
Source: nyfd.com
- 1909
A limestone firehouse replaces the 1880 house in 1909, built for the latest equipment including motor vehicles
In 1909 a limestone building replaced the 1880 firehouse on the site. Brownstoner gives its size as 25 by 62 feet, with space for equipment on the ground floor and, upstairs, offices, sleeping quarters, washrooms and a meeting room. The house was renamed Ladder 106 by 1913, and the building was meant to hold the latest gear, including new motor vehicles.
Source: brownstoner.com
- 1972
Ladder 106 moves to a new house at 205 Greenpoint Avenue in 1972, and the city sells the old firehouse in 1975
Ladder 106 worked from 124 Greenpoint Avenue until 1972, when it relocated a short way down Greenpoint Avenue to a newer headquarters at No. 205, which Brownstoner calls uninspired. The city sold the old firehouse in 1975 to the owner Brownstoner described in 2012, who also owns the former garage next door at No. 122.
Source: brownstoner.com
- 1982
The 1982 landmarks report describes the firehouse's stone front, still lettered Hook & Ladder No. 106
The Landmarks Preservation Commission's 1982 Greenpoint Historic District report describes No. 124 as a Beaux-Arts style firehouse of about 1910 on ground that had held a firehouse continuously since 1855. A two-story segmental arch frames the ground-floor bay and the second-floor window group, with a stone spandrel between the floors and a modillioned cornice on top. The company's name can still be read in the frieze.
Nearby
- 118 Greenpoint Avenue2 entries
- Polish Slavic Federal Credit Union138 Greenpoint Avenue | 4 entries
- St. John's Evangelical Lutheran Church155 Milton Street | 4 entries
- Margaret Wise Brown birthplace118 Milton Street | 2 entries
- Neziah Bliss House130 Kent Street | 3 entries
- Polonaise Terrace150 Greenpoint Avenue | 6 entries