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Lafayette Square Fire Station

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1893, Condon and Greco. Lafayette Sq.

The largest of Cambridge's nineteenth-century fire stations, the Lafayette Square station remains one of the few built with a hose tower. Designed as an Italian Renaissance campanile, the tower effectively offsets the great mass of the station with its steep hipped roof and three round-arched bays. A young Cambridge architect, Charles R. Greco, won the competition, but he was not of age and took Charles Condon, only twenty-one, as his partner. The building was adapted for motorized equipment after 1921, and the upper section of the hose tower was modified in 1928. After a fire in 1965, dormers were removed, but the front dormer was re-created during the building's restoration in 1997.

Writing Credits

Author: 
Keith N. Morgan
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Data

What's Nearby

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Citation

Keith N. Morgan, "Lafayette Square Fire Station", [Cambridge, Massachusetts], SAH Archipedia, eds. Gabrielle Esperdy and Karen Kingsley, Charlottesville: UVaP, 2012—, http://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/MA-01-CS7.

Print Source

Cover: Buildings of Massachusetts

Buildings of Massachusetts: Metropolitan Boston, Keith N. Morgan, with Richard M. Candee, Naomi Miller, Roger G. Reed, and contributors. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2009, 294-294.

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