Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2018.
From the record
“The Old Fire Station is a historic fire station at 822 Swanwick Street in Chester, Illinois. The fire station was built in 1935 after the Chester City Council voted to fund a new fire station the previous year.”
Wikipedia article Old Fire Station (Chester, Illinois), CC BY-SA 4.0.
One of 12 National Register listings published here for Randolph County · listed in 2018 · category: Building.
National Register reference number. 100002571 - assigned by the National Park Service when the property was listed.
Fires near this property
18 since 2013
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 18 fires within 5 miles of Old Fire Station
between 2013 and 2017, burning about 28 acres in total. None started naturally. 1 was recorded as arson.
Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted
here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.
Reported cause
Fires
Debris and open burning
14
Equipment and vehicle use
2
Missing data/not specified/undetermined
1
Arson/incendiarism
1
The most recent of
them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service
that recorded it.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists
6 workings within 5 miles of Old Fire Station: 2 occurrences, 2 past producers, 1 producer, 1 prospect.
1 still produces. What was taken out: Stone, Crushed/Broken, Sand and Gravel, Construction, Clay. Distance is straight-line from the
map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring
settlement's page as well.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The National Weather Service names
Chester, the town this property stands in, in 36 storm reports between 1995 and 2024: 18 thunderstorm wind, 14 hail, 3 tornado, 1 flash flood.
No death or injury is recorded in these reports. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office
filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date
opens the federal record of that event.
Golf ball-size hail was reported in Walsh with numerous trees and power lines down between Chester and Steeleville. The roof of a drug store in Chester was partially ripped away. About 1,900 households were also without power in Prairie Du Rocher, Ruma, and Red Bud.
Thunderstorm winds blew down several power poles on the east side of Chester. Also, several trees were blown down along Illinois Route 3 between Chester and Rockwood.
Up to 6 inches of rain fell on already saturated soils in Randolph county from the late evening hours of March 17th through March 18th. Numerous secondary roads were flooded throughout the county.
The fourth tornado from the Southeast Missouri supercell crossed into Randolph County Illinois about 9:47 pm CST moving across the southern portion of Kaskaskia Island. Debris originating from near St. Marys, Missouri was found in some fields on the island. Numerous snapped or uprooted trees were found on the island. The tornado crossed the Mississippi River on the north side of Chester with a damage path about 300 yards wide. F2 level damage was found just north of the Chester Correctional Center where a number of trees were leveled or snapped off. The tornado produced F1 damage at the Gorden Bud Cohen Recreational Complex where three wooden light posts were snapped off near the base, and several ball fields backstops and fences were blown over. Just to the east, three large pole barns and several outbuildings were destroyed, and a house had roof and exterior damage. The damage at this point was 300 yards wide and rated F2. The tornado continued to produced F1 to F2 damage along the remainder of its path through Randolph County with a nearly continuous 300 yard width. A Notable area of F2 damage were found just north and northeast of Bremen along Highway 150. This damage consisted of metal high power electric towers blown down, a destroyed mobile home, a number of destroyed barns and metal outbuildings, roof and exterior damage to several homes, and numerous trees uprooted. F2 damage was also found near Highway 150 about 1.5 miles west of Steeleville. The rear portion of a house had considerable roof and structural damage, several detached garages were destroyed, at least 5 metal outbuildings were destroyed, several barns destroyed, signs broken, and trees and power poles snapped. The tornado finally exited Randolph County about 1.5 miles south of Highway 154 on County Line Road about 10:15 pm CST.
The County Sheriff reported trees down along Route 3. A tree on Chestnut Street fell directly onto the roof of a house causing significant roof damage.
A brief tornado hit a neighborhood on the south side of Chester. One home suffered roof damage while another had some siding stripped off. Several large pine trees were snapped at the base and a large oak tree was broken 15 feet from the base.
No historic map-sheet match is published
for this property yet. That does not mean no map exists. This record needs
a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary.
Browse the county's mapped places while that work is
pending.
Listed places nearby
4 within 8 miles
Other National Register properties close
enough to walk or drive between, ordered by distance from this one. Both
positions come from the same geocoding pass that matched these properties
to their map sheets.
Listing record. National Park Service National Register of Historic Places, listed-properties dataset, current to 2026-05-22.
Map join. Address geocoded through the United States Census geocoder, then tested against the published boundary of every sheet in the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection.
How this page is made. Listing fields come from federal records; map-sheet coverage is a labelled coordinate-to-boundary calculation, not a source-field claim.
Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.
Mines and quarries. USGS Mineral Resources Data System (MRDS) https://mrdata.usgs.gov/mrds/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.
Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.
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