Fire Engine Company 253
2429 86th Street | also 2425 86th Street | Gravesend | built 1896
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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.
- 1896
Brooklyn's Engine Company 53 goes into service on 86th Street in Bensonhurst
Parfitt Brothers filed the building application on August 17, 1895, and the firehouse went into service on February 1, 1896. The two-story brick building cost about $13,000. Standing among still-vacant lots, it could be seen from Gravesend Bay and from Bay Parkway half a dozen blocks away, which made it an instantly recognizable landmark.
- 1896
Parfitt Brothers give the firehouse a Dutch Renaissance Revival design of tawny brick and stepped pediments
The firehouse is faced in tawny brick with brownstone details and stepped pediments, a style the commission links to civic buildings of northern Europe and the American colonies in the early seventeenth century. The design nodded to the area's roots among Kings County's first six towns. The report calls it a rare late nineteenth-century public building in a neighborhood where few structures predate the 1898 consolidation, and a symbol of the district's 1894 annexation by Brooklyn.
“Dutch Renaissance Revival design alludes to the area's roots as one of the first six towns established in Kings County. It is faced in tawny brick…”
- 1913
The firehouse's company number changes from 53 to 153 and finally 253
After the 1898 consolidation of Greater New York, Brooklyn's engine companies received a "1" prefix to avoid confusion among the five boroughs, so Engine Company 53 became Engine Company 153. In 1913 the city gave a "2" prefix to the units in Brooklyn and Queens. That change produced the company's present title, Fire Engine Company 253.
- 1998
The Landmarks Preservation Commission designates Fire Engine Company 253 a city landmark
On September 15, 1998, the commission designated the firehouse an individual landmark. A public hearing on April 21 of that year drew one witness, who spoke in favor, and the Fire Department backed designation. The report was prepared by Matthew Postal of the commission's research department.
Nearby
- L&B Spumoni Gardens2725 86th Street | 1 entry
- Magen David Yeshivah High School7801 Bay Parkway | 1 entry
- Edith and Carl Marks Jewish Community House of Bensonhurst7802 Bay Parkway | 3 entries
- Van Sicklen House27 Gravesend Neck Road | 6 entries
- Old Gravesend Cemetery40 Gravesend Neck Road | 5 entries
- Cafe Lily42 Avenue O | 2 entries