On a Mission to Save a Historic Old Firehouse

It all started one day late in 1983 when Rudy Brown was riding on a Central Avenue bus, looking out the window. There it was.

The dilapidated, scarred old building, still pretty in its abandonment, had to be the firehouse he had been reading about--Engine Co. 30, the city’s first all-black-staffed fire station. Then he noticed the sign over the doors: “Engine No. 30 L.A.F.D. Truck No. 30.” He had not dreamed it was still standing.

At the time, Brown was studying for a master’s degree in planning at UCLA and working as an intern with the city’s Planning Department. About three months earlier, he recalled recently, “I was having a slow day at the planning office and one of the staff handed me a book he thought I’d be interested in.”

“The Old Stentorians” by Arnett Hartsfield Jr. told the history of the city’s black firefighters, starting from the hiring of George Bright in 1897, through the period of segregated crews, on through segregated facilities, of which No. 30 at 1401 Central Ave. became the first in 1924, up until the order went out to integrate all fire stations in 1955. Hartsfield, who teaches black studies at Cal State Long Beach, had been a firefighter at No. 30 from 1940 to 1956, and is a member of the Stentorians, the black firemen’s organization.

Brown did find the book interesting. And once he found the building, that interest became a consuming one. He is on a mission now, gathering converts along the way. Even the severe setback his mission received last spring, when an arson-caused fire severely damaged the building’s interior, did not deter him. In fact, he became more dedicated than ever. He is not alone.

The mission: to preserve and restore the old building and put it to new use as a permanent home for the Los Angeles Community Design Center and other nonprofit community organizations, with a public area that will celebrate the building’s history and be available for exhibits and meetings.

The Community Design Center, founded in the late ‘60s, is a nonprofit design, planning and financial consulting firm that works with neighborhoods and community organizations, usually on a fee basis, in designing, renovating or converting existing structures for low-cost housing, day-care centers, clinics, residential facilities and mobile home parks.

Since 1972, its current executive director, planner Anita Landecker, said recently, the center has moved four times, always searching for adequate space and affordable rents in the downtown area.

“The benefit of having a permanent home for the design center would be that we could provide more services and do so more easily,” she said.

When Brown got off the bus last year, he researched the building and found it was owned by the city. The Fire Department moved out six years ago. Its last tenant, the Department Recreation and Parks, which used the building for storage, had vacated it three years ago. By some kind of minor coincidence, its fate was scheduled to be reviewed in the near future by the City Council’s Public Works Committee.

He took the information to his teacher at UCLA, Dolores Hayden, a professor of urban planning. Hayden was engaged in her “Power of Place” project, identifying places in downtown Los Angeles where history had occurred, especially history pertaining to labor and minorities. By developing an itinerary of such places, the project would be creating what Hayden has called a “museum without walls.”

Brown and Hayden researched the building further, he said, and brought its significance to the attention of the Public Works Committee, halting the proposed sale of it. Eventually, they applied for designation as a historical monument to the Cultural Heritage Board. It was approved earlier this year.

Then the Fire Came

They were moving right along when the fire came on April 22: Hayden had approached the Design Center, which expressed interest in using the building for offices and public uses. Councilman Gilbert Lindsay had helped gain city approval of a 15-year, $1-a-year lease. Restoration and seismic code costs had been estimated at $175,000. The Atlantic Richfield Foundation sent the Design Center a check for $15,000 for restoration. The Los Angeles Conservancy and the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency agreed to help find the least costly way to comply with the seismic code. . . .

They had planned to move in last June.

And then the fire. Damages to the second floor were assessed at $40,000. And since last April, vandals have been at work in the unsecured building, breaking windows, ripping out fixtures, leaving graffiti. Renovation costs are now estimated at $200,000 as Engine Co. 30 continues to deteriorate.

To walk through the building with Brown and Landecker is to walk through time past and time future, with scant attention to time present. Brown, who is positively starry-eyed about the place, has such a sense of history about it that it would not be surprising to see firemen slide down the three poles from the second floor, or to hear that he does see them. At the same time, he and Landecker clearly can see the building restored. The present sad state of things is a temporary inconvenience.

Stepping inside the vast, trash-littered lower level, Landecker eyed the array of graffiti, most of it gang insignia, and smiled, “I’m learning more about the gangs each time I come.”

What she and Brown focus on when they stand in that space is the lustrous, rich brown hardwood ceiling. It is beautiful and still intact except for a few boards at one end. They see that, and the imaginary division where they would offer office space to, they guess aloud, the Stentorians, Power of Place, the Center for Community Change, the Conservancy. And the area up front, where exhibits would commemorate the entrance of minorities and women into the city’s Civil Service, where Black History month would be observed . . . .

Started on Second Floor

The climb upstairs is hazardous, due to the debris left from the fire that was started in a second-floor locker room. The upstairs ceiling is now a pile of slats scattered on the floor. But they passed quickly through the mess to the front rooms, where the captain had his quarters and where the men shot pool. The old pool counter, a series of wooden spools strung on a wire, was still hanging on the wall and Brown removed it, lest some vandal get to it.

Outside it was the same. The place is a mess, filled with trash and broken glass. But the small, tree-lined concrete patio already had umbrella tables and staff eating lunch there.

Where the present is undeniable and alive is the racquetball court. A group of young men have been playing there almost daily for months. At the sight of the visitors, one of them rushed up to Brown, worried and respectful, and asked if he was going to buy the building. There is precious little in the way of recreational facilities in the area. They hoped they would still be able to play.

“General Services tried to keep the place locked up,” Landecker said as she walked away from the young men. “But people who wanted to get in would just break upper windows and let themselves in. The building has got to be secure and insured as soon as possible, but there should also be a way to let the public use it, like these guys are.”

That could come after the Design Center takes over the lease. And the center cannot do that until it can afford the insurance and security. And only after that will come the renovations.

Yet they are talking of a tentative completion date in April, 1986.

They have applied to the city for $75,000. They are hopeful that would bring a matching grant from the state. Other proposals are going out. And other schemes.

Brown has been working on a November fund-raiser and he has begun calling it “A Night on Central Ave.”

“It would be a re-creation of what Central Avenue was. It was the hub of entertainment from here to 52nd Street for blacks and some whites as well,” he said. He has talked with a film archivist who has film clips from the ‘20s. He’s cultivating sources like black civic groups, he said, thinking about interesting black entertainers, trying “to find the ones with the deep pockets.”

“You know,” he said of the fairly depressed area, “I think a lot of these businesses would love to see this building renovated. It would benefit them too.”