Engine 88 / Ladder 38 Firehouse
2225 Belmont Avenue | Belmont | built 1931
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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.
- 1872
The McManus home stands on the lot later taken by the firehouse
In 1872, long before the firehouse, its lot on what became Belmont Avenue held the McManus home. Across the road stood the Grote mansion of about 1860, which later became Aquinas Hall, a Catholic girls' high school. The street itself took the name Belmont Avenue in 1896.
“In 1872, the site of the firehouse was the location of the McManus home, and across the street, sat the Grote mansion.”
- 1908
Engine Company 88 and Ladder Company 38 move into their new Belmont firehouse
The Fire Department paid Herts & Tallant $2,381 for the design in 1906, and the Art Commission approved it on June 11, 1907. The building was dedicated and put into service on November 15, 1908. A wall ran the full depth of the building, splitting it into two separate quarters, one per company, with ten horse stalls in all on the ground floor and no kitchen, since firefighters ate at home.
- 1908
Broadway theater architects Herts & Tallant give the city its only Prairie-style firehouse
Herts & Tallant, designers of the New Amsterdam and Lyceum theaters, broke from the classical firehouses of their day and drew on the Prairie style. The Landmarks Preservation Commission traces the big bracketed limestone frame around the top-floor windows to Unity Temple, finished by Frank Lloyd Wright in Oak Park, Illinois, in 1906. No other firehouse in New York City has been built in this style.
“Herts & Tallants' Belmont firehouse was the first, and to this day the only firehouse of this style in New York City.”
- 1918
Ladder Company 38 trades its horses for a tractor-pulled ladder
The move from horses to motors started here in 1918, when Ladder Company 38 got its first tractor-drawn ladder and retired its horses. Engine Company 88 did the same in 1920. With the horses gone, the old stable space on the ground floor was turned into a kitchen.
- 1968
The wall dividing the two companies' quarters comes down
For more than fifty years Engine 88 and Ladder 38 worked in mirror-image halves of the building. Around 1968 the interior wall between them was torn out, so the two companies could share duties such as staffing the watch desk, which no longer needed two people.
- 2023
The Landmarks Preservation Commission designates the Belmont firehouse a landmark
On June 13, 2023, the commission made the 1908 firehouse at 2225 Belmont Avenue an individual landmark. It cited the building as a rare civic work by Herts & Tallant, built before the city adopted its standard Model Fire House Plan, and as the only known Prairie School-influenced firehouse in New York City.
“…the only known example of Prairie School-influenced design in a New York City firehouse.”
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