Canoga Park Wins Fight to Save Firehouse

Canoga Park civic leaders say they have won the battle to save their town’s first firehouse.

Businessmen and residents have fixed it up. Community leaders will move a small museum and a Chamber of Commerce office into the old Engine Company 72 fire station at 7246 Owensmouth Ave. after the first of the year.

A $100,000 renovation project has reinforced the 53-year-old tile-roofed landmark and preserved a graceful adobe-brick facade distinguished by French doors and a front porch.

Inside, the 50-foot-long garage with a Spanish-type tile floor and a stamped-tin ceiling has been converted into offices and community meeting rooms that will be open to Canoga Park groups. For 45 years it housed Los Angeles City Fire Department engines.

“This building would have been bulldozed if we hadn’t come in and earthquake-proofed it,” said Glenn Kirby, a Canoga Park minister who coordinated the project.

Kirby’s is no idle boast.

‘Twin’ Due for Demolition

In next-door Reseda, a fire station built 54 years ago as a “twin” to Canoga Park’s will be demolished in the coming year to make way for a new firehouse.

There is no move afoot to preserve the old Reseda Engine Company 73 building at 7419 Reseda Blvd. And there’s no nostalgia about its date with the bulldozer, either.

“It’s unsafe in an earthquake. It’s antiquated. This station’s falling apart,” said Capt. Herman Schuler, who heads one shift of Reseda firefighters.

Built in 1931 and 1932 with floor plans that are mirror images of each other, the Canoga Park and Reseda firehouses cost slightly under $25,000 each, including the cost of the land.

City fire officials moved firefighters out of the Canoga Park station in 1978 after they built a $779,000 station near DeSoto Avenue and Vanowen Street. The Reseda replacement firehouse will cost less because it will be smaller and will be built on the existing fire station site, officials said.

The city has acquired extra land next to the Reseda Boulevard station to allow for a larger station house.

The two fire stations were built before construction laws required reinforced masonry for earthquake safety. Both survived the 1971 Sylmar earthquake.

Since then, Fire Department engineers have periodically inspected brickwork at the Reseda firehouse to make certain it is still safe. But there are cracks throughout the building, and its front doors are held together with steel bracing rods.

During earthquakes, firemen hurry to move their trucks from the firehouse to a parking area outside a nearby Reseda supermarket. “This place could fall on us,” Schuler said.

Reseda’s fire trucks are 18 and 23 years old and gasoline-powered. “We had diesels, but they stunk up the place,” Schuler said. “There’s no ventilation in the back of the building.”

There is plenty of character to the old Reseda fire station and its Canoga Park counterpart, however.

Both were in a Spanish motif in what was then traditional Fire Department design for horse-drawn firefighting apparatus, even though the city had turned to motorized fire trucks 11 years before either station was built.

Both stations had kitchens in a separate building behind the firehouse, away from horseflies and manure odors. There was room for horse stalls.

Those involved in the Canoga Park firehouse renovation took steps to preserve its old-time atmosphere, said project chairman Kirby.

The front porch, where firemen sat in the evening and visited with townspeople, has been retained. So have the French doors leading from the porch to the firehouse office. The huge wooden garage doors have also survived--although they are permanently locked shut.

Stress tests were performed on the fire station’s exterior walls during the renovation, said Kirby, minister of the West Valley Christian Church. Reinforcing beams were added where necessary, and new interior walls were constructed to add structural strength.

Available for Local Groups

Besides the small museum that will be set up in the front of the firehouse, displays such as a Rocketdyne rocket engine are planned for a rear courtyard where firemen once washed and waxed their engines.

Kirby said the station house’s three new meeting rooms will be available free to local groups under provisions of a 10-year, $1-a-year agreement between his Canoga Park Community Center Foundation and the city, which still owns the firehouse. The lease was granted after the city was persuaded that the foundation was capable of raising cash for repairs.

Mostly Small Donations

He said West Valley businesses and groups were called on to donate to the renovation during a 2 1/2-year period. Gifts included a $12,500 grant from Rocketdyne, $5,000 from Arco Solar Power and $4,000 each from Mervyn’s and Targets stores. Canoga Park High School students contributed free labor.

Much of the money came in small donations, Kirby said. “Not many community groups could have raised $100,000 in mostly $10s and $20s and $100s like we did,” he said.

Fire officials say their long-discussed Reseda station replacement plans have not prompted any community campaign to preserve that community’s old firehouse, however.

“It takes quite an effort and a large area to support something like they’ve done in Canoga Park,” West Valley Fire Battalion Chief Raymond Gordon said Tuesday.

But at the crumbling old Reseda station, there was evidence that the old firehouse will be remembered.

The station’s original brass dedication plaque has been unbolted from the front of the building and mounted in a wooden frame with a photograph of a 1930s-era Reseda fire crew. The plaque and picture will be prominently displayed in the new firehouse.

Handcrafted Memento

The oak-framed memento was handcrafted by Firefighter Keith Schwan, who retired to Wyoming last month after spending 22 of his 25 years with the Fire Department at the Reseda firehouse.

“He must have liked this place a lot,” Schuler said of Schwan.