Fire Station 27 at 8401 Douglas Ave in Dallas designed by Perkins and Will and photographed by Thomas McConnell

All the comforts of home Design to the rescue at new Dallas fire stations

From the moment a call comes in, a buzzer followed by an automated dispatch voice with details of an emergency and its location, it takes around 30 seconds for the four-man crew of Station 27 to get out the door, sirens blaring. It’s a quick escape, and that’s by design. The station is a place they call home, but one firefighters need to leave in a hurry.

“One thing people don’t understand is that this is our house,” says Lt. Nelson Rossy, a 21-year veteran of Dallas Fire-Rescue who now supervises its building projects. “We’re the only city building that operates the way we do.” Indeed, a fire station is unique among public buildings in that it is a place not just to work but to cook, eat, sleep (albeit lightly), work out, hang out, read, watch television, argue about the Cowboys and play the occasional game of pingpong.

It’s also a place to clean. Firefighters spend a good portion of their time maintaining their stations, a Sisyphean task exacerbated by the fact that many Dallas facilities are aging and obsolete relics that have reached the end of their life cycles. Twenty of the city’s 57 stations are more than half a century old, and that’s not including Station 11, a city landmark built in 1909 but remodeled in 1985. More than half of the stations are over 40 years old.

City bond programs of 2003 and 2006 sought to ameliorate this problem with the construction of 11 new stations. These efforts have been beset by delays, such that the last of these facilities, Station 6 in South Dallas, is only now under construction. Architecturally, the results have been mixed, with Preston Center’s Station 27, which opened last December, the unofficial standard-bearer of the program.

Slideshow: Life at the fire station Driver and engineer Christian Espinoza cleans the apparatus bay inside Station 44, the most recently completed station. (Andy Jacobsohn/Staff Photographer) Station 27 has two stories and underground parking, unusual for a Dallas firehouse. (Thomas McConnell) A bunk room inside Station 44 is part of the living quarters. Fire stations are unique among public buildings in that they are places not just to work, but to live. (Andy Jacobsohn/Staff Photographer) Firefighters John Smith (left) and Henry Rios clean up after breakfast at Station 44. (Andy Jacobsohn/Staff Photographer)

In the best tradition of the fire station, it is a neighborhood landmark, its presence announced by 16-foot-tall Helvetica numerals stamped into its concrete western wall. That’s 13,824-point type, if you’re experimenting on your desktop.

The instant legibility that scale affords is “a response to the scale of the car,” according to architect Ron Stelmarski, design director at Perkins + Will. “When you see that number you know, hey, this is a firehouse.” Indeed, the numeric supergraphic has made the building an instant landmark for drivers heading east along Northwest Highway.

That concrete wall serves as a billboard, but it also has an architectural function. “We really wanted to make the building durable and simple,” says Stelmarski. “That’s why we made the cast-in-place concrete wall.” In fact, it is not just a wall, but a concrete shell that wraps the building, providing both structural support and an efficient thermal barrier.

The new firehouse replaced the old station on a small lot in Preston Center, where the high cost of land made a new site unaffordable. (Thomas McConnell)

The station, which also has a rainwater recovery system and solar panels on its roof, has achieved LEED gold status.

The structural system can be read clearly along Douglas Avenue, where the smooth surface of the concrete envelope cantilevers out forward toward Northwest Highway, like an enormous Tetris piece. Vertical shade fins and a grid of circular bolt imprints in the concrete, a residue of the construction process, make it something more than a plain wall, a courtesy to pedestrians.

From the front, that projecting cantilever is accentuated by fire-engine-red aluminum panels that wrap into the building’s interior.

Altogether it makes for a striking modern presence, but it is more than just a roadside attraction to pass by at high speed. “We wanted to be sure when we put something new there, that we tried to make a connection to the community,” says Stelmarski. “There’s a coolness factor and some intrigue as to what goes on in fire stations, and we thought, how do we dial that up? How do we tell the story?”

The answer was to invite the public in, both physically and metaphorically, an effort that is somewhat undercut by a double-height window fronting Northwest Highway that is made opaque by a stained-glass art project. In theory, that window would have invited passers-by into an open atrium that divides the vehicle bays from the station’s living areas.

From left: Station 27 includes an ample helping of natural light, a stained-glass art project and an industrial washing machine. (Interior photo by Thomas McConnell; Art and machine photo by Andy Jacobsohn/Staff Photographer)

Those who do enter that space will find a small museum with displays that describe and illustrate the history of the fire service and Engine 27. Running along a balcony above, subtly etched into the shiny red metal panels that wrap the facade, are silhouetted portraits of significant figures in the history of the fire service, among them the first female and minority firefighters, and Capt. Ralph Lack, a Station 27 captain killed while responding to an apartment fire two days before Christmas in 1975.

Station 27’s firefighters appreciate that history, and the generous setting. “The natural light in here is what makes it. You don’t get that anywhere else. It’s cathedral-esque,” says Blaine Touchstone, a 14-year veteran who is on Station 27’s B shift. (Firefighters work in rotations that run 24 consecutive hours, from 7 a.m. to 7 a.m., followed by two days off. That means every fire station has three shifts — A, B and C — three families who share the same house.)

Station 27 is unusual in other ways, not least being that it is two stories tall, actually three if one counts its underground parking garage, which serves also as an emergency shelter. This is a breach of the city’s standards for fire stations, as detailed in an 82-page manual that stipulates everything from roofing materials to the placement of doorbells and explicitly mandates that all new stations be of a single level, to protect firefighters from injury. Sliding poles (never mind Dalmatian dogs), which are considered a safety hazard, are prohibited.

Station 27’s firefighters appreciate the generous setting. (Thomas McConnell)

Those precautions may seem somewhat ironic, given that the very job description of the firefighter includes running into burning buildings. “If you asked the firefighters, they’d much rather have a sliding pole,” says Rossy. “You can injure yourself just as easily running down the stairs.”

Station 27 breaks with prescribed standards because of its location; the cost of land in its booming Preston Center environs made the acquisition of a larger space in the area impossible. That meant using the same lot occupied by the obsolete station it would replace, an unremarkable structure built in 1948. Before that, Engine 27 was stored in a small garage and firefighters spent their days waiting for calls in a shuttered flower shop next door.

Back then the station took calls all the way from Mockingbird Lane to the Collin County line. These days, with the city having grown considerably outward, the catchment area is smaller but far more dense; most of 27’s business is medical calls and wrecks on the Dallas North tollway and Loop 12. (The least busy station is 21, which is dedicated solely to Love Field.)

Building a multilevel structure added its own expenses and headaches, however. Much of the fabrication was done off-site, and excavations for the basement level created a series of delays. “Going down below grade, you had no idea what you were going to find,” says Stelmarski. What they found were a series of utility lines whose presence was made more challenging by storm flooding. The project ultimately cost upward of $8 million, more than any other station in the system.

Station 27 is also atypical in plan. Normally, apparatus bays — “apparatus” being fire department lingo for vehicle — are aligned side-to-side facing the street, with the living quarters set behind them. But the compromised site precluded that arrangement.

The vehicle bays of Station 27 are adjacent to the firefighters’ living quarters. (Thomas McConnell)

Instead, 27’s living quarters are adjacent to the apparatus bays, which are organized in a pull-through configuration, with two parallel lanes in which vehicles are parked front-to-back. Doors at opposite ends allow the trucks to exit in a hurry from the front but return through the rear, meaning they don’t have to hold up traffic on busy Loop 12 while they back into the station, endangering themselves in the process.

At present, 27 has but a single fire engine, though it can accommodate up to four, including a hazmat unit. That shiny red truck is a 2014 Spartan Gladiator, which requires a crew of four and can pump 350 gallons of water a minute. “It’s fast, it’s loud, and it needs a lot of gas,” says Dave Moreno, one of the station’s designated drivers.

It is visible in all its shiny red glory from a gym set within a glass-encased truss that hovers dramatically above the apparatus bay. After the kitchen, it might be the busiest space in the station. “Some hotels I’ve stayed in don’t have a view this nice, and I’ve stayed in some pretty nice hotels,” says Touchstone. “You need to have muscle on board to perform this job.”

Indeed, fitness has always been a part of the job. In the 1960s, applicants had to be able to rope-climb 25 feet, dead-lift 300 pounds and have 20/20 vision. They also had to pass an aptitude test, have good credit and demonstrate a “positive high-school attitude.” Today’s firefighters must have 45 hours of college credit and complete both written and physical ability tests.

For Stelmarski, placing fitness apparatus adjacent to firefighting apparatus was as much a philosophical statement as an architectural one. “It’s like the body as a machine. That was an important metaphor,” he says.

Getting to the engine is, of course, a priority, and the building is modulated, albeit subtly, to enhance firefighter response time. This was accomplished by making the central atrium in the shape of a wedge, with the bunk rooms shifted toward the rear, narrower end, reducing the route to the engine by some 15 feet.

From Old Silsby to modern fire engines The city’s first fire engine, Old Silsby, was bought in 1873, and was pulled by a team of horses. The second, Old Tige, was acquired in 1884, and is now on display at the Dallas Firefighter Museum by Fair Park. Today’s models are much more sophisticated and go a lot faster. Fire Station 44’s 2012 Spartan Gladiator, which maxes out at about 68 mph, is a good example. Flick two master switches and press an ignition button and its turbo starter jumps to very loud life. “Everything is computerized on this,” says Steve Weiss, who has been driving trucks for the fire service for 30 years. Originally that meant a lime green model. This one is red. “It’s more fire department,” he says. Tap or hover for details

Every step counts. “A few seconds saved in getting apparatus out of the station is often the difference in saving lives and property,” instructs the departmental standards manual. That time is even more valuable now than it has been in the past. “We used to have 30 minutes to get to an alarm. Now we have 10,” says Deputy Chief Michael Price, a 41-year veteran of the fire service and one of the commanding officers for the northern sector.

This new math is the product of the cheaper construction methods and materials that have fueled the city’s rapid expansion. Synthetic building materials, often petroleum-based, are structurally sound enough to carry heavy loads, but they fail more rapidly than natural materials.

Those synthetic materials are not just dangerous when they collapse. When they burn, they release carcinogens — in particular hydrogen cyanide and benzine. Ironically, some of the most dangerous gases are produced by flame-retardant products applied to upholstery. These contaminants stay with firefighters even after they have left a fire scene, off-gassing from their firefighting tools and personal protective equipment, or “bunker gear.”

The effects have been severe. A 2010 report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health concluded that synthetic materials have placed firefighters “at higher risk of cancers of the digestive, oral, respiratory, and urinary systems when compared to the general population.”

The macho culture of firefighting has contributed to these health problems. “Back in the day it was a badge of honor to wear your dirty bunker gear,” says Rossy. “Now we know those have carcinogens.” The fire stations themselves are designed with these risks in mind: Apparatus bays are now required to have two decontamination rooms, one for firefighting equipment and another for bunker gear, the latter stocked with an industrial washing machine known as an extractor that can remove chemicals from the firefighters’ gear.

Changing culture, notably the arrival of female firefighters in 1977, has also reshaped the sleeping quarters of the fire station. Dorm-style bunk rooms are arranged with four individual pods. Bathrooms, once with communal showers, now have individual stalls. “When the fire service was all male it wasn’t that big a deal,” says Price. “Because of our female firefighters we’re trying to give our firefighters a little more modesty. That’s good for everyone.”

The design standards for these living spaces leave unfortunately little wiggle room for architectural invention. Nonetheless, they mark an improvement in the daily lives of firefighters, who would just as soon not leave their stations. “If we don’t make one call, it’s a good day,” says Rossy. “When we go out it’s misery for someone. No one calls 911 to give us cookies.” ♦

Mark Lamster is the architecture critic of The Dallas Morning News and a professor in the architecture school at the University of Texas at Arlington. He is the author of several books and is currently at work on a biography of Philip Johnson.

A tour of recently completed fire stations

Station 32 4262 N. Jim Miller Road Architect: BRW Opened: 2014 A fine example of Texas modernism, the handsome brick structure boasts broad horizontal awnings for shade and a clerestory window along its front façade to keep the interior bright. The building achieved LEED Gold status.

Station 37 6780 Greenville Ave. Architect: Dewberry Opened: 2013 One of the larger new stations, 37 is designed to accommodate a fire engine, a ladder truck, an ambulance and a car for a deputy chief, who has a sector command office at the facility. There’s also a conference room for post-call meetings and training sessions. “It’s like the death star. It’s just big and awesome,” says Lt. Ayman Ghousheh, a 14-year veteran. “Compared to other stations, there’s more room to interact, more room to train.”

Station 44 Fitzhugh Avenue and Lagow Street Architect: Mcafee3 Opened: 2016 The most recently completed station, 44 is defined by its broken gabled roof. Architecturally, it is the least compelling of the new buildings, with a drab interior palette and a too-small fitness space. A major concern for the station is effective wireless capability: Service can slow dramatically when the State Fair, at neighboring Fair Park, is in session.

Station 50 841 S. Walton Walker Architect: Perkins + Will Opened: 2012 The spiritual and aesthetic antecedent of Station 27, Station 50 is defined by a dramatic sloping roof, red paneling and large supergraphics that can be read at speed from the adjacent Loop 12. In addition to standard apparatus, 50 houses a rescue boat for calls on nearby Mountain Creek Lake.

Eat like a firefighter

If firefighters are known for anything — besides rescuing cats (and people) and putting out fires — it’s for their appetites and the communal meals that define the culture of the firehouse. A large open kitchen with adjacent dining space is reliably the busiest place in any station. Typically, every firefighter contributes to a daily fund for food and incidentals, such as cable television. Everyone is expected to cook, but some are more proficient than others. Among the more talented is Stuart Peterson, a firefighter at Station 37 known for his potato salad and his brisket, cooked in a smoker on the station’s ample rear terrace — trust a firefighter to know how to control an open flame.