FIRST DUE FIREHOUSE REPLICAS

Website by Andrew Benzie Creative Design.

About the Owner/Designer/Builder/Author

Andrew Benzie began collecting model emergency vehicles in the 1970s when his grandparents gave him his first Corgi and Dinky toy fire engines. He has an extensive collection and knowledge of Code 3 models, and has published three books on Conrad, Siku, and Tomica emergency vehicles. Andrew currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area where he runs a design and book publishing company, and plays bass and drums with several local bands.

The Fire Department of New York Fleet Services building is a remarkable facility which has been keeping the nation’s largest fire department in service for nearly 75 years. Inside the building resides a team of 350 dedicated workers in charge of the maintenance and repair of every single vehicle in service with the FDNY (including fire engines, trucks, tower ladders, rescues, hazmat units, ambulances, chief and staff cars, service and fuel trucks, and dozens of spare vehicles).

The Long Island Shops are in effect an enormous garage, with fire department rolling stock in various stages of rebuilding and repair neatly arranged along both sides. FDNY’s Buildings Maintenance Division is also located at this facility. This unit is responsible for the upkeep and maintenance of the city’s 218 firehouses (including electricity, communications, plumbing, masonry, etc.).

About the Firehouse

In 1948, the Fleet Services Division moved into its vast new building at 154 Hunters Point Avenue (between 34th and 35th streets) in Long Island City, where it operates one of the most unique, and certainly the largest enterprise of its kind to be found in the nation’s fire service.

The building itself is unusual in architecture (known as the Z-D system of Monolithic Construction) and was erected under the immediate supervision of Bernard J. Farrell, resident engineer of the Department of of Public Works, and Robert Zabrowski, resident engineer for the Roberts & Schaefer Company, owners of the “Z-D” system.

It was the first of its kind in New York, and is said to be “as near fireproof as science and a fire conscious fire department could build.” An important feature from a structural standpoint is the lack of posts, columns or supports of any kind on the main floor. This tremendous uninterrupted floor area is covered by a 3 1/2-inch thick curved slab roof, suspended from arches on 35-foot centers.

The height of the entire building is two stories (32 ft.) and consists of three shells, a large one in the center and smaller ones on either side. The roof will carry a snow load of 40 lbs. per square foot. The towering antenna provides radio communication throughout the City.

The interior of the facility is equipped with numerous workstations outfitted with two and four-post lifts along with an assortment of professional-grade mechanical tools. At any given time 40 to 50 FDNY vehicles are waiting to be checked, serviced or repaired.

1929 American LaFrance type 145 FDNY tow truck

Location:

154 Hunters Point Avenue

48-58 35th Street (Fleet Services Division)

48-34 35th Street (Buildings Unit Division)

Long Island City, Queens, NY

Years in Service:

1948-present

Companies Quartered:

•Fleet Services Division

• Buildings Unit Division

Links:

Fleet Maintenance Division Vehicles (Michael Martinelli)

Videos:

Fire Apparatus & Emergency Equipment’s Trip to FDNY’s Fleet Services (Fire Apparatus and Emergency Equipment Magazine, 2000)

FDNY HD - Tour of the Repair Shops + New 2013 Tower Ladder Closeup (FlipSwitch Games, 2012)

Inside the FDNY Shops Part 1 (Jack McCarthy, 2015)

Inside the FDNY Shops Part 2 (Jack McCarthy, 2015)

When a new piece of FDNY apparatus arrives from a manufacturer, the Fleet Services Division is responsible for performing a thorough testing process before acceptance. This is a formidable job considering every item must be checked on hundreds of new units every year.

Among the special equipment housed here are four coal-forges, a gas-fired furnace, a 200-lb. triphammer, an 800 lb. steam hammer and various power saws, punches and shears, a motor repair shop, a machine shop (with lathes, milling machines, grinders, shapers, planers, drill presses), and paint-spray rooms for painting, stripping and lettering the apparatus.

The shop contains over $4 million worth of Seagrave, Ferrara, and KME spare parts—everything, from truck transmissions, pumps, electrical parts and tires is neatly stowed away in storage racks. Every part is labelled and registered. Complete aerial ladder assemblies are also stored onsite. If repairs are needed, crews will swap out the entire ladder—the ladders are then sent back in batches to the original builders to be refurbished.

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