Engine Company 289, Ladder Company 138
97-28 43rd Avenue | also 97-30 43rd Avenue | Corona | built 1914
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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.
- 1914
Engine Company 289, the city company that replaced Corona's volunteers, moves into its new firehouse
Before 1913 the area depended on two volunteer outfits, Pioneer Fire Hook & Ladder 6 and Louna Engine Company 8. The city organized Engine Company 289 in September 1913 and for its first year rented the Pioneers' old two-story wooden house on 102nd Street. The company moved into this building when it was completed in December 1914, at a final cost of $60,000, and for a time it was Corona's only firehouse.
- 1914
Architects Satterlee & Boyd cut their own initials into the firehouse's red ironwork
Designed in a late French Renaissance style with a steep mansard roof and two side-by-side bays for motorized rigs, the firehouse carries little ornament: medallions of the Fire Department and the city seal, and grilles bearing Maltese crosses lettered F,D,N,Y. The center grille instead names the architects with the letters S & B. A tiled roof terrace at the rear was meant for the firefighters' exercise and leisure during long shifts.
“…the initials "S & B" were cut into the metal to identify the building's architects.”
- 1929
Hook & Ladder Company 138 is installed alongside Engine 289, fifteen years after the house opened
From 1914 to 1929 Engine Company 289 worked the building as a single combination company under one captain. A grille below a second-story window is inscribed 139, a sign that the Fire Department once meant to place Hook & Ladder Company 139 here, but no ladder unit was formally established until 1929, when Company 138 moved in.
“…no such unit was established until 1929, when Hook & Ladder Company 138, was officially installed.”
- 1998
Ladder 138, the self-styled Corona Tigers, makes more runs than any other ladder company in the city
In 1998 Ladder Company 138 made 4,105 runs, the highest total among 143 companies citywide, while Engine Company 289 made 4,382 runs, ranking 23rd of 204 units. The firefighters here call themselves the Corona Tigers and paint the slogan "Rely on the tigers" on their vehicles. In May 1999 it was one of several Corona buildings named a Queensmark for their history and architecture.
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