Hall of Flame

Museum of Firefighting

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Here are some more new exhibits at the Hall of Flame

1908 Pirsch Horse Drawn City Service Ladder Wagon

George F. Getz, Jr. founded the Hall of Flame in 1961.  He opened a small exhibit in his home town of Lake Geneva, Wisconsin in 1964.  In 1967 he moved the Hall of Flame to Kenosha, Wisconsin.  While in Kenosha he received a nice addition to the collection -- a city service ladder wagon once used in West Allis, Wisconsin.  It was built by the Peter Pirsch Fire Apparatus Company in 1908. During the 1920s West Allis motorized its equipment and donated the ladder wagon to the Wisconsin State Fair, which displayed it on its fairground.  The rig was not well maintained, and fell into disrepair.  Sometime in the 1950s the President of Peter Pirsch, Mr. William Pirsch, purchased the old wagon and stored it on his company's grounds with the intention of restoring it for advertising purposes.  After meeting Mr. Getz, he decided to donate it, un-restored, to the Hall of Flame.  Mr. Getz had the rig refurbished by a local craftsman and placed on display, but it was a far cry from its original appearance.  The Hall of Flame moved to Arizona during the 1970s.  When its Phoenix exhibit building opened in 1974, the West Allis wagon went on display.  Over the next twenty years the Hall's restorer, Don Hale, brought dozens of wheeled pieces back to their original appearance, but never got around to the ladder wagon.  It really suffered by comparison to the newly restored pieces, and finally went into storage because it no longer met the Hall's standards for exhibit quality.  In 2000 Don finally had the time to do a restoration of the rig.  After several months of work, it went back on exhibit in Gallery 1.  Don removed all paint and primer and then filled and sanded the rough metal frame.  Using a Pirsch delivery photo of an identical model ladder wagon that went to Waukegan, Wisconsin, Don painted , striped and gold leafed the wagon.  He had to re-build all four wheels, which had rotted badly on the Wisconsin Fair Grounds.  The rig received a compliment of ladders which William Pirsch donated to the museum in the 1960s.  Don fabricated a new driver's compartment and installed a foot gong.  It was also equipped with lanterns and forcible entry tools appropriate to the era.  

Not many city service ladder wagons of this size have been saved by collectors or museums.  Their large size, and the difficulty in finding accessories for them present a considerable challenge.  The 1908 Pirsch adds a lot to the display of the museum's other horse drawn ladder wagons:  three village wagons built by Rumsey, Preston, and Pirsch, and a home made village wagon dating from the 1850s.  We also have a Babcock horse drawn aerial truck from Benton Harbor, Michigan, which Don also painstakingly restored in 1993. It is pictured below.

1880 Rumsey Hand Drawn Village Ladder Wagon

In 1965 we acquired a pair of fine pieces of fire apparatus from the town of Edgerton, Wisconsin.  The first was a 1922 American La France Type 75 fire engine.  Don Hale restored this piece in 1990.  The second acquisition from Edgerton was a hand drawn village ladder wagon which the town had purchased used in 1887.  Town records did not disclose the name of the original owner, but did list the rig as having been built in 1880.  There was no maker's name on the rig, but it is very similar in style to Rumsey ladder wagons of the day.  Rumsey, a Seneca Falls, New York maker, was one of the leading manufacturers of hand drawn fire apparatus in the late 19th century.  As with the 1908 Pirsch ladder wagon , Mr. Getz commissioned a refurbishment of the wagon which left a lot of room for improvement.  The wagon's running gear is made almost entirely of wood supported by strips of wrought iron.  The wheels, too, had a lot of wood rot.  The ladder rack, too, had been clumsily modified sometime during its life.  There was a distinct possibility that the suspension might fail and break one or more axles.  In the Fall of 2001 we rolled the wagon into Don Hale's shop for a complete restoration.  Don reinforced the suspension, repaired all of the wheels, and re-fashioned the ladder rack to its original configuration.  He then took the paint down to bare wood.  Unfortunately the rig had been stripped to bare wood at an earlier time, so we had no idea as to the original paint color or decoration.  We used illustrations form Rumsey trade catalogues of the day.  We also equipped the wagon with a compliment of beam style ladders similar to those shown in trade catalogues.  Fortunately we had a compliment of original leather buckets and helmets and play pipes from the original rig.  In August we placed the rig back on permanent exhibit in Gallery 1. It is pictured below.

1952 Diamond T / Van Pelt Fire Engine

In the summer of 2001 we received the donation of a 1952 Van Pelt fire engine from the fire department of Timberline - Fernwood, Arizona.  This community lies a few miles north of Flagstaff, on the main highway to the Grand Canyon.  The Flagstaff FD originally purchased the rig from Van Pelt.  Van Pelt was the West's largest maker of fire apparatus, with a reputation for quality.  Our rig came with a big 900 cubic inch Hall-Scott gasoline engine and a Hale 1250 gpm single stage pump.  It also came with a Hardie high pressure fog pump with two delivery hoses, and a 500 gallon booster tank.  After about 30 years with the Flagstaff FD, the rig was sold to the volunteers of nearby  Timberline - Fernwood, who used it mostly as a brush truck, since its high pressure pump allowed for pump and roll operation.  However, it was also quite useful as a structural fire engine or as a vehicle fire engine because of its large main pump and its high pressure fog capability.  During the 1990s the firefighters of Timberline - Fernwood repainted the rig and removed the bumps and dings acquired during its long service life. With it looking so nice, they hated to take it out on brush fire runs in the woods.  Also, the rig was approaching its 50th birthday, an advanced age for fire engines in service.  The decision was made to donate the rig to the Hall of Flame.  A Timberline - Fernwood firefighter drove the rig from Flagstaff to a firefighter workshop in Mesa, Arizona, where it was placed on display.  Following the display Hall of Flame volunteers and staff drove it to the museum in nearby Phoenix.  It has been on display in Gallery 3 ever since.  The rig is very similar in appearance to a Van Pelt / Diamond T recently restored by the fire department of Tempe, Arizona.  We are very glad to have a rig that was built by Van Pelt, especially with the Hall-Scott engine, which was very highly regarded for power and reliability by western fire departments. We have also been looking for a chassis by Diamond T, which is regarded as one of the premier American truck builders.  Beyond a few accessories, some minor paint work, and new upholstery for the driver and officer seat, the piece is in top condition.  It is pictured below at the Timberline - Fernwood storage building.

1948 Willys / Howe Fire Engine Goes on Exhibit in Gallery 3

In 1968George F. Getz purchased a 1948 CJ-2 Willys Jeep fire engine built by the Howe Fire Apparatus Company of Anderson, Indiana.  Willys introduced the CJ (civilian jeep) after World War II in an effort to broaden the market for its famous four wheel drive quarter to trucks to the civilian world.  The CJ 2 appeared in 1948, and one of its configurations was as a fire engine.  Howe added a front mounted Barton centrifugal pump to the vehicle's power takeoff, built a small but efficient hose bed and equipment storage unit, placed a rack for a pair of hard suction hoses on top of a tubular frame, and slipped a ladder and pike pole between the suctions.  A pair of axes, a filter for the hard suctions, a Federal siren, and a pair of fire extinguishers completed the equipment, except for an optional 200 gallon water tank / trailer, which included a booster reel and 200 feet of red line.  The tank was connected to the intake of the pump for quick attack with the red line at a brush fire.  The rig could pump and roll.  At a structural fire the hard suctions could draft from a farm pond or hydrant and supply a 2 1/2 inch hose with 350 to 500 gallons of water per minute, depending on which size pump was purchased.  Although the Jeep was hard pressed to pull a 2,000 pound water trailer over rough terrain, the engine was an obvious success, since Howe sold over 400 of the little engines.  Mr. Getz purchased his from a Wisconsin Poultry Farm operator, who used it for firefighting needs on his farm.  At the time the fire department of Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, where Mr. Getz had a summer home, needed a brush engine.  Mr. Getz loaned it to Lake Geneva, which used it until the early 1980s, when they returned it to Mr. Getz, who then transferred it to the collections of the Hall of Flame.  In 1989 Don Hale refurbished the rig, getting its pump back into operating condition and providing a nice coat of paint.  The Jeep was popular at parades and special events.  It's ability to tow large loads kept it in Don's shop as a tow vehicle for rigs which were being restored.  Don pushed the rigs outside of his shop for painting, since we do not have a spray booth.  Following a paint application, Don would fire up the Jeep and tow the piece back into his shop to dry.   A re-arrangement of the pieces on display in Gallery 3 allowed us to place the Jeep on formal display in early 2001.  It is on exhibit quite close to the overhead door to the parking lot, where it can rapidly be moved for towing jobs.  Don is also well underway in restoring the water trailer, which will be placed on exhibit with the Jeep.  

This English rig came to the museum from a British antique dealer who had no information on its provenance.  It was built by Shand Mason, a leading English fire apparatus firm, around 1870.  Merryweather built an identical rig.  They were called curricles to associate them with the light, sleek carriages called curricles which appeared in England in the 1750s.  Unlike the carriages, fire fighting curricles were drawn by a single horse.  A large bin sits atop its single axle.  A two cylinder manual single acting pump, complete with air chamber, is attached to the frame immediately below the driver's seat.  A crew of four could ride the rig to a fire.  The bin has room for several hundred feet of hose.  Once at the fire scene, the crew would enlist the services of bystanders to man the pump.  During the 1860s and 70s the number of volunteer and paid fire companies in Britain increased by considerable numbers.  Curricles were an inexpensive and efficient way to equip companies which could not afford steam fire engines or the larger "Brigade" manual pumpers.

Our curricle was restored in 2003 by Don Hale and is now on permanent display in Gallery I.

During the summer of 2003 Don Hale restored a chemical cart once owned by the Yerkes Observatory, the observatory of the University of Chicago.  The cart was built by the Fire Extinguisher Manufacturing Company of Chicago. FEMCO was one one of the earliest makers of fire extinguishers.  Established in 1866, It was absorbed into the International Fire Company in 1900.  Four years later this company Was itself absorbed by the American La France Fire Engine Company.  The cart's tank has a capacity for thirty gallons of water mixed with sodium bicarbonate.  A stoppered lead bottle of sulfuric acid was suspended in a basket below the tank's fill port.  A basket atop the tank carried fifty to one hundred feet of 3/4 inch rubber hose, with a small diameter off/on nozzle.  At the fire the cart was upended on the axis of the axle, causing the stopper to fall out of the acid bottle.  The acid mixed with the soda-water solution and generated carbon dioxide gas, which propelled the water through the hose onto the fire. Flipping the tank also caused the hose to fall conveniently to the ground, ready for deployment.  Carts of this type were used in factories and towns all over the United States.  Our cart dates from the period 1880-1900.  It is on permanent exhibit in Gallery I.