1088 Green St
San Francisco, CA 94133, USA

Engine House No. 31 (Russian Hill Firehouse) - National Register of Historic Places

Statement of Significance:

Engine House No. 31 is architecturally significant as a very pleasing facade design in Craftsman/Tudor Revival style, virtually intact. It is one of the municipal buildings built to replace those lost in the great earthquake of 1906. It is the only Craftsman/Tudor Revival firehouse known to have been built in San Francisco, certainly the only firehouse in this style among the seven post-fire ones illustrated in Architect & Engineer in 1910. Of about 24 firehouses constructed by the City between the 1906 fire and the adoption of motor-powered fire engines in 1912, only seven survive, and none of the firehouses built for horse-power is still in active service. The Russian Hill Firehouse is unique in San Francisco and highly rated in both the City's architectural surveys. Its design and completion came out of the large City Architecture Department headed and closely supervised by locally significant architect Newton J. Tharp.

The basic plan of Engine House No. 31 appears to have been the same as that of all San Francisco firehouses from the 1850s until modern times: main floor absolutely at street level, an arched or trabeated tall and wide engine doorway and transom centered on a symmetrical facade, building width of 21-30 feet and depth of 60-85 feet, a second floor as dormitory for the firemen. A few buildings had third stories, or were double width (single symmetry repeated), or were built as one story with the dormitory story to be added later. Only the more important firehouses were of masonry rather than frame construction, possibly a legacy from the proud volunteer companies rather than a response to fire safety. About 1890, hose drying had ceased to require an exterior tower. Even after a motor-powered fire engine decisively won the test race against a horse-powered one on July 11, 1912, and the City committed itself to buy only motor-powered fire engines, even then the basic firehouse plan did not at once change significantly.

In 1906, 22 of the City's 44 firehouses were destroyed by the fire; only nine required earthquake repairs. Within 24 hours of the three-days' fire, all the burned-out companies "were provided with quarters for the men and apparatus, and they were again in readiness to respond to alarms of fire."2 Within one year, 12 temporary firehouses had been constructed, nine of them on their former lots. None of these temporary buildings survives. They were decidedly minimal: frame construction, standard towerless plan, "rustic" weatherboard siding, plain board surrounds for the openings, an engine door essentially square with the simplest commercial-style strip transom and a single exterior lamp.

More permanent structures came later. By the end of the 1906-1907 fiscal year (30 June), two "permanent" firehouses were under construction. Newton J. Tharp was appointed City Architect on 23 October 1907, and he immediately took in hand the design and construction of long-lasting municipal buildings. About a dozen new firehouses were completed 1907- 1912, only two of them brick, the rest frame. The seven illustrated in the Architect & Engineer article all appear of the standard plan but have individual facades. Four have engine entries with voussoir half-round arches and stylistically could be considered Beaux Arts (the two brick ones), Chicago style (I) and Sullivanesque (1). Two more have molded half-round arches and could be called respectively Mission Revival and Chinese Revival. Cladding is stone, stucco, or brick and terra cotta (the Sullivanesque one). Engine House No. 31 is unique in its Craftsman/Tudor Revival Style.

After the advent of motor-powered fire engines in 1912, firehouse design changed slowly. Reinforced concrete structures have replaced frame, buildings and entries are wider to accommodate more pieces of equipment per station, symmetry was abandoned, and greater distances were tolerated between fire stations. Horse-drawn equipment could not reach distant fires soon enough, so the earlier firehouses were placed near each other and were smaller and more numerous. At the beginning of the motor era San Francisco had 66 firehouses; in 1986 only 43 of them served a larger population and a greatly increased building stock spread over a larger area. The Fire Department has decommissioned or destroyed all its buildings constructed for horse-powered engines. Engine House No. 31 is one of only sixteen firehouses surviving from that era; in order it was the third of the seven survivors built between 1906 and 1912. And its facade is the only known example of those styles on a San Francisco firehouse.

Newton J. Tharp (c.1867-1909) influenced San Francisco's municipal buildings far beyond what might be expected from his mere 18 months as City Architect. He initiated the immense task of replacing the city government's buildings lost in the 1906 fire, he was extremely conscientious, hard-working and effective, he hired a large and talented staff (the city fathers must have allowed him a liberal budget), and in the 18 months after his sudden death from pneumonia while on a business trip in New York City, his position was filled by no less than four architects in succession, who seem to have done little more than follow in the high-quality. City Beautiful/Beaux Arts path Tharp had laid out. He was born in Petaluma and learned his profession at the Mark Hopkins Institute of Art, in Chicago, in European travel that included a little study at the Ecole des Beaux Arts and in the San Francisco office of Edward R. Swain. At different times he was associated with Edward L. Holmes and First Bay Area Tradition specialist Albert Farr; in 1905 Tharp and Tudor Revival specialist Edgar Mathews shared a publicity booklet. Tharp's work is known to have embraced Beaux Arts, Chicago, Craftsman and First Bay Area Tradition styles. Before working with the city, he had designed cover No. 16 of The Lark (San Francisco's little literary magazine of the 1890s), the column and base for the Dewey Monument in Union Square, the Grant Building in the Market Street Theatre and Loft District, a few other business buildings and quite a few residences. On 23 October 1907 he began work as the City Architect at a salary of $4,000 a year. In that position he planned a number of firehouses, several schools and the basic outline of today's San Francisco General Hospital. His obituary in Architect & Engineer reads in part;

In the death of Architect Tharp San Francisco loses one of its most faithful servants—a man who made his personal comfort and health second to his duty toward his city. The position of City Architect was given him soon after the great fire of 1906, at a time when practically every municipal building was in ruins. It remained for him to plan the noble structures that since have risen in place of those destroyed. It was, indeed, a stupendous task—^barely commenced, in fact, when he was taken away. . . He gathered around him a staff of experts, none better in the country. He sought the best help the market offered, and he was willing to pay well for it. At the time of his death Mr. Tharp had a corps of more than sixty draughtsman in his employ, each especially fitted for the particular line of work for which he was engaged.

The original fire company for the Russian Hill area had been organized in 1869 and located about 3-1/2 blocks away also between Leavenworth and Jones but on Pacific Street in the saddle between Russian Hill and Nob Hill. Its firehouse had burned in 1906, and Chief Engineer P.H. Shaughnessy recommended to the Board of Supervisors "that the lot of Engine Co. 31 on Pacific Street, near Jones, be exchanged for a lot near Union and Leavenworth Streets, to furnish better protection to a section which is rapidly building."^ The subject lot was accordingly purchased in April 1907. In June 1908 Tharp reported to the Board of Supervisors, "Under the present system it is the intention of the Board of Works to have all of the proposed schools and fire houses designed within the Department of Architecture, but to call for competitions among architects for the larger and more monumental structures. On the "Green Street Fire Engine House" he reported: "An appropriation of $8,554 was made by the Board of Supervisors during the early part of 1908, for the construction of a fire engine house on the north side of Green Street, near Leavenworth. Plans were prepared in the Department of Architecture and a contract for the construction of the building was let to John Dahlin on February 27, 1908, for the sum of $7,380. The inside sheathing was put on by the Superintendent of Public Buildings after the completion of the contract on May 27, 1908, and the building was occupied by the Engine Company shortly thereafter.”' The Firehouse initially held a Metropolitan double apparatus engine, third class, served by ten men and five horses under the command of Capt. Thomas Canty, who had been a fireman about 25 years.

The City's Municipal Record reported that Newton Tharp designed this Firehouse "to conform with the architectural features of the private residences of the district". In The American Firehouse Rebecca Zurier cites the Russian Hill Firehouse as an example of residential-influenced Tudor Revival design for firehouses, and she seems to have found only four other examples; in Seattle, New Orleans, Lake Forest, IL, and South Orange, NJ.

After the Firehouse was decommissioned by the Fire Department in 1952, its future was uncertain until Louise S. Davies bought it in 1958. She had it restored and adapted to serve as her townhouse upstairs, and a small museum of Fire Department memorabilia and "party room" downstairs. She is doubtless responsible for the vestibule conversion and the paneled single overhead garage door and transom, and probably also for the present right-side door which is harmonious but different from the historic photo. To Mrs. Davies' meticulous preservation and care we owe the continued existence of this unusual and delightful building, which she deeded to the National Trust for Historic Preservation (retaining life interest) in 1978.