Silencing an Alarm : 1912 Wilshire District Fire Station Will Close Doors Next Month

When the firefighters of Task Force 29 move into a modern building next month, their former home, the oldest working fire station in the city, will shut its doors forever.

And what doors they are: tall wooden portals on giant hinges, made so horses could easily get in and out. Los Angeles Fire Station 29, at 158 S. Western Ave. in the Wilshire District, dates to 1912 and was among the last in the city designed to accommodate horse-drawn fire wagons.

The horses never actually moved in. Motorized vehicles upstaged them before the Italian Renaissance-style building, with its arched windows and red-glass carriage lamps, opened in 1913.

Now, because of the city’s seismic upgrading laws for earthquake safety, the historic two-story red brick relic, declared a city monument four years ago, will pass into history.

The firefighters of Task Force 29 have mixed feelings. They say they’ll miss the fire pole--no longer part of modern fire station design--that takes them from the second-floor dormitory to the engines below.

“It’s my favorite station. It has a lot of character,” Capt. Howard Slaven, 53, the station commander, said Thursday. A 30-year veteran of the department who has worked at No. 29 for seven years, he and his men have already dug out the building’s 1912 cornerstone, to carry over to the new $2-million station at 4029 Wilshire Blvd. as a souvenir.

Upstairs, the large, drafty dormitory room is outfitted with 10 small beds, all with yellow spreads, on a bare wooden floor. An office nearby contains scratched-up wooden desks, old-fashioned green roller shades over the windows and a mottled brown linoleum floor.

But Slaven added: “Of course, it’s not a real comfortable place to work.” It’s freezing cold in the winter and unbearably hot in the summer, he said, with no air conditioning except in the kitchen, originally designed as a place to store hay.

Space is at a premium. On the ground floor, two engines and a ladder truck are wedged in behind the front doors. Firefighters don’t have the advantage of modern stations, which allow engines to drive in through both front and back doors, said Jim Finn, the station’s engine captain.

At Fire Station 29, “they have to back in, and you don’t have much side or vertical clearance,” Finn said. “It’s real close. We had to move the front doors out several feet just to get the engines in.”

The wooden ceiling, with steel crossbeams, is also very low, so the firefighters have to crouch when working inside on the vehicles. A bright red duck is painted on one beam. On another, a hand-drawn sign warns: “Duck your head.”

Even with the old building’s problems, “This is probably one of the most sought-after stations because we’re so busy,” Slaven said. “We’re the fifth busiest in the city.”

The station served the Wilshire and Koreatown areas, responding to 5,688 emergencies last year. And because of its central location, No. 29 has been called out on some of the city’s largest fires, Slaven added, from the 1961 Bel-Air blaze to the 1986 Central Library fire.

According to the station’s log, eight firemen came to work on the building’s first day of operation, April 16, 1913, as well as another firefighter who was assigned there by mistake. There were no fire calls that day because Western Avenue, then on the outskirts of the city, had no fires to put out.

The current log had three pages filled for Christmas Day, 1990, including notes on a woman who tried to commit suicide, a drunk sleeping on the sidewalk and a small heater fire in an apartment.

The city will put the building up for sale when the firefighters move, Battalion Chief Dave Badgett said. He noted that if a new owner fails to perform seismic work, the building will have to be razed. City monument status is no real protection, officials say.

But Tom LaBonge, field deputy for Councilman John Ferraro, who represents the area, said: “We hope it’s sold and restored. It’s an important building.”

Other old fire stations have been reused, LaBonge said, such as Station 32, which became a Filipino market on Beverly Boulevard, and Engine Company 28, which is now a restaurant on Figueroa Street.

“We’re not going to sell it to anyone who’s going to tear it down,” LaBonge said.