I.andmarks Preservation Connnission October 2, 1990; DesigTiation List 227 LP-1545 FIRE ENGINE CXMPANY NO. 65, 33 West 43rd Street, Manhattan. Built 1897-98. Architect, Hoppin & Koen. I.andmark Site: Borough of Manhattan Tax Map Block 1259, I.Dt 18. On September 17, 1985, the I.andmarks Preservation Connnission held a public hearing on the proposed desigTiation as a I.andmark of Fire Engine Company No. 65, and the proposed desigTiation of the related I.andmark Site (Item No. 5). The hearing had been duly advertised in accordance with the provisions of law. Four witnesses, including a representative of the New York Fire Department, spoke in favor of designation. No witnesses spoke in opposition to designation. The Connnission has received several statements in favor of designation. DFSCRIPI'ION AND ANALYSIS Summary Erected in 1897-98, the Fire Engine Company No. 65 firehouse was built to increase fire protection in an almost unprotected yet increasingly fashionable neighborhood. Its construction came at the end of a decade of extensive redevelopment which transfo:nned service-oriented West 43rd Street between Fifth and Sixth avenues into a locus of prestigious hotels and club buildings. Its largely intact, stately facade is the result of professional developments in the New York Fire Department during the nineteenth century. The graceful proportions and Renaissance-inspired vocabulary of the exterior are derived, for the most part, from the Beaux-Arts architecture of the influential 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Designed by the young firm of Hoppin & Koen, the Fire Engine Company No. 65 firehouse is a transitional design between the earlier, picturesque firehouses by the finn of Napoleon I.eBrun (later N. I.eBrun & Sons) and the later, standardized neo Georgian mcx:iular scheme by Hoppin & Koen that was executed throughout the city after 1910. Several years after designing the Fire Engine Company No. 65 firehouse, the firm was responsible for another Beaux-Arts style civic edifice, the New York City Police Headquarters Building. At the vanguard of mcx:iern fire fighting, Fire Engine Company No. 65, which began with then up to-date horse-drawn equipment, was the city's first to use pneumatic tires, a diesel powered pumper, and lime-green colored apparatus. Throughout its long and distinguished history, the company has fought many perilous and costly conflagrations; it continues the heroic task tcxiay. History of the Neighborhoodl West 43rd Street between Fifth and Sixth avenues contained, as late as the 1880s, a few dwellings surrounded by car and horse stables used by the Sixth Avenue Railroad Company, operator of the adjacent streetcar line. The site of the future firehouse contained a wood-frame house occupied as a branch of Taggart's stables.2 The block was similar in its utilitarian 1

character to others in the neighborhcxxl. However, northward movement of the city's well-to-do neighborhcxxls into this district during the 1890s transformed its character and enhanced its desirability for high quality non-residential development as well. Many social and professional clubs, having outgrown their homes in converted brownstone residences located further downtown, began to move into specially designed club houses built in the neighborhcxxl. The 1893 decision to remove the nearby Croton Rese:rvoir from its location on Fifth Avenue between West 40th and 42nd streets, in preparation for the erection of the New York Public Library, solidified the neighborhcxxl's standing as a cultural center. The character of this section of West 43rd Street had changed completely by the end of the century, due to the erection of the prestigious and fashionable hotels and club buildings, many of which were designed by the most notable architects of the day. These include: the Academy of Medicine by R.H. Robertson (1889, demolished) at No. 15; the Century Association by McKim, Mead & White (1889-91, a designated New York City I..andmc

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