Fire Hall No.7
6508 118th Avenue
Architect: John Martland of the City Architects Department
Constructed: 1941
For the three decades Northeast Edmonton’s sole fire station was located at the intersection of 67th Street and 128th Avenue. That put it in the heart of Packingtown, far way from the rest of the city — its placement was always one of circumstance, not practicality. Fire Hall No.7 was a gift from the City as a sign of good faith. A token, representing their commitment to the newly annexed Village of North Edmonton.
The decision pretty quickly put them in a bind.
Excluding the core neighbourhoods, City policy tended to only allocate one fire hall per quadrant. That meant Station No.7 had to service all Northeast Edmonton, from Packingtown to the Highlands to Cromdale, distance be damned. Years of struggle surely followed. For most of its service area, No. 7 was just too far away to be of any real help. As the Edmonton Journal recounted, since the beginning “the Fire Chief had wished to [relocate] the North Edmonton Fire Hall near the intersection of 118th Avenue and 66th Street so that it would be more conveniently located for the whole Northeastern District.”
The City got their chance to do that in 1941. A Roman Catholic concern had interest in the old hall. They wanted to convert it into “St. Mary’s Home for Boys.” Presented a way out, City Commissioners jumped on the opportunity. $10,000 and one sold fire hall later, tenders for its replacement were issued. Construction began that September with William B. Whyte serving as general contractor.
The new No.7 was something wholly different from its predecessors. Gone was the second storey. Gone were the classical fixtures. Gone was any pretension. It would be utilitarian through-and-through. Moderne flair, with fluted pilasters, relief panel, curved wall, glass brick, and low horizontal massing reflected a “convergence of architectural and industrial design” fitting for an institutional building. A “celebration of bare, unadorned surfaces, whose attraction lay in the simple beauty of frankly expressed materials and simplicity of form” set the architectural standard for all future municipal projects.
But something else also bucked a trend. A classic feature of every fire hall was missing: the brass pole. It was “something unique in [Edmonton’s] fire-fighting history,” the Journal explained. “The $11,000 brick building has only one storey, so there is no need for one of those slippery poles which firemen use in all other halls to slide down jiffy-quick to ground floor duty.” While firefighters like Station Captain Tom Hardy “sort of missed” that old-school charm, No.7’s became the way of the future, ushering in an era one story design .
On December 6th, 1941, Edmonton’s newest fire hall was put into service. It was manned by a crew of five men, day and night, maintaining a ladder truck and two pumps. Accommodations for the Police Department were also made, with storage space for prowler cars and motorcycles. Chief James MacGregor would tell the papers that “he was well pleased with the new hall and thinks it will serve its wide district to good advantage.” It did just that until it was replaced in 1975.
Image Gallery:
Sources:
“Contract Awarded On New Fire Hall,” Edmonton Journal, September 16, 1941.
“Edmonton Annual Review of Civic Administration,” Edmonton Journal, November 1, 1941.
“New Fire Hall Put in Service,” Edmonton Journal, December 6, 1941.
“New Fire Hall Lacks Brass Pole But Firemen Like It,” Edmonton Journal, December 9, 1941.
“Fire Hall Cost Raised $75,000,” Edmonton Journal, June 7, 1974.
Leslie Maitland, Jacquelin Hucker, Shannon Rickets, A Guide to Canadian Architectural Styles (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 1993), 148.
“Edmonton,” The Sisters of Providence of St. Vincent de Paul, accessed March 11th, 2021,
https://www.providence.ca/our-story/history/missions/edmonton/.
