Fire Station No. 1

The Norfolk and Western Railway made Roanoke a city in 1882 by planting its headquarters in what had been a crossroads called Big Lick. Population multiplied by twenty-two in the 1880s. By 1907, the volunteer brigades couldn't cover a city that kept doubling, so Roanoke built Fire Station No. 1 on Church Avenue — the first permanent house for engines and paid crews. The Romanesque Revival brick is a downtown fixture now, listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The hose tower is the distinctive feature: a tall narrow shaft that rises above the roofline, built to let wet hoses dry vertically between calls. Active crews worked here until 1969. The building was adapted for commercial use after that, but the exterior survives intact on Church Avenue downtown, and the tower still marks the block where the boomtown learned to fight its own fires.