Engine Company 73 Firehouse
655 Prospect Avenue | also 659 Prospect Avenue | Melrose | built 1900
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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.
- 1900
The city builds a firehouse for Engine Company 73 in the new Longwood neighborhood
Longwood was just being developed when this firehouse went up in 1900 at Prospect Avenue and East 152nd Street. The builder Fountain & Choate put it up for $26,668, and Engine Company 73 was formally organized that November. Its architects, Horgan & Slattery, were close to Mayor Robert Van Wyck's Tammany administration and the firm drew heavy criticism in the press as the "City Architects."
“The Firehouse, Engine Company 73, was constructed in 1900 at the corner of Prospect Avenue and East 152nd Street.”
- 1900
Horgan & Slattery dress the two-story firehouse in ironspot brick and terra cotta
The two-story building is in a Northern European Renaissance Revival style, faced in orangish ironspot brick with limestone and terra-cotta bands. Over the vehicle bay, inscribed "73 ENGINE 73," Ionic columns frame a second-story window under a scrolled pediment bearing a torch, while the 152nd Street side has red brick in a diamond pattern. The original cornice and balustrade were replaced after 1912 by a concrete parapet.
- 2013
The Landmarks Preservation Commission designates the Engine 73 and Ladder 42 firehouses
The commission made the paired firehouses at 655-659 and 661 Prospect Avenue a city landmark on February 12, 2013. At the hearing in December 2012, two speakers, for the Historic Districts Council and for Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr., backed the designation, nobody spoke against, and the Fire Department sent a letter of support.
“There were no speakers in opposition to designation. In addition, the Commission received a communication from the Fire Department…”
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