By Hetty Startup

Being on the Amherst Historical Commission has been an amazing education for me, including as a way to fast-track my own education of the histories of Amherst. Recently, we witnessed the demolition, after a 6-month demolition delay of #55 South Pleasant Street (of old, the Jeffrey Amherst Bookstore and one of the few remaining timber-framed structures in Amherst Center.) It was proving hard to rent and needed a lot of work that current owners were not willing to undertake given their plans for the site, so down it came. 

I wrestle these days with the idea of taking the ‘rough with the smooth’ and ‘moving on’ from collective decisions that the Commission makes that sometimes trouble me. So, to move on, it is very gratifying to share positive news about the new paint job completed at the North Amherst Fire Station, which was built in 1975.

Town representatives of the Fire Department came before the Amherst Historical Commission a couple of years ago to ask about painting the existing white vertical siding red instead and it got the go ahead. It is because of its age and its architectural significance that we were able to weigh in on this issue.

The North Amherst Fire Station is one of many Brutalist style buildings in Amherst, and they are clustered on or near the UMass campus. It bears all the hallmarks of this beleaguered but much-loved style by some, like me. An early black and white photograph shows its brilliant volumetric shapes, curving, molding, and edging its way, back into the site, at the top of East Pleasant Street and Eastman Lane.

More history relating to fire safety in the north end of Amherst is on the Town website.

It is interesting that some historic fire brigade stations in England in the same Brutalist style chose red as a contrasting color for the gray concrete facades. One example is the Bethnal Green Fire Station, in east London.

Bethnal Green Fire Brigade Station, Tower Hamlets, 1967-8, Greater London Council Special Works Dept.

Assistant Fire Chief, Lindsay E. Stromgren was kind enough to share the photos below, showing the red paint that now protects the vertical siding on the bays where the fire trucks are located, and on the west side in the upper story of the firehouse, where bedroom units were once located for staff.

By contrast to this success story, the Fire Department has a challenging home in our downtown where the bays for the trucks are barely wide enough and the staffing areas in a small, back addition that I believe predates the main building facing N. Pleasant Street, are cramped and in need of an upgrade. I live in hope that they will be given a new building somewhere suitable in our town and that the Central Fire Station building will be spared from demolition. Being listed as significant on the National Register of Historic Places is not a guarantee of its continued physical presence in our historic downtown. I hope it will be re-purposed as it is one of the better classically inspired and sympathetic newer buildings from the 1930s in our town center. (The National Trust for Historic Preservation recently published an article about saving historic fire stations in New York City.)

So that is my rough with the smooth ‘sandwich’ for the architecture of fire safety this week. Be safe out there.

Hetty Startup lives in Amherst where she serves on the Historical Commission and works with college students. She grew up in London, England and moved to the United States in the late 1980s to raise a family and continue working as an architectural historian. She serves as a trustee of the First Congregational Church, in Ashfield.