Firehouses are mixed-use buildings, with garage space, living quarters, and equipment-prep rooms that are effectively light industry space. Modern firehouses physically represent these multiple uses, and don’t really deserve the name “house” at all.
The building above is the former Engine Company 27, completed in 1882 to a design by Napoleon LeBrun & Son, a firm that designed a lot of firehouses in New York. It’s on a domestic scale similar to that of a rowhouse, as is fitting for a building that housed a single horse-drawn engine. More than anything else, it resembles the mid-1800s commercial buildings of lower Manhattan, which were generally on a domestic scale. It’s a “house.”
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