Built in 1976 in the Federal architecture. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in
1975. A historic map-sheet match is not published yet. The record needs a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary.
From the record
“The New Bedford Fire Museum is a local history museum at 51 Bedford Street in New Bedford, Massachusetts, United States. It is located in the 1867 Fire Station No. 4, the city's oldest surviving fire station.”
Wikipedia article New Bedford Fire Museum, CC BY-SA 4.0.
one of 272 National Register listings in Bristol County · listed in 1975 · category: Building · built in 1976, Federal architecture · one of 8 National Historic Landmarks in Bristol County.
National Register reference number.75000250- the number the National Park Service assigned this property when it was listed, and the key its nomination file is catalogued under at the National Archives.
Fires near this property
26 since 2015
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 26 fires within 5 miles of Fire Station No. 4 between
2015 and 2020, burning about 18 acres in total. None started naturally. None 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
Missing data/not specified/undetermined
12
Debris and open burning
6
Recreation and ceremony
3
Smoking
2
Misuse of fire by a minor
1
Fireworks
1
Power generation/transmission/distribution
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. Museums hold 2,238 specimens
collected within 10 miles of Fire Station No. 4 between 1824 and
1975: 925 Animalia, 631 Plantae, 567 Fungi, 87 Chromista, 23 Bacteria, 5 Unrecorded. 12 distinct Species records are shown.
Collected by A. B. Gridley, A. B. Seymour, A. Clark and others. Each is a
physical object with a catalogue
number, and each entry opens the museum's record. This is what was
collected and kept, not a survey of what lives here - nothing can be
concluded from a species being absent.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists
7 workings within 5 miles of Fire Station No. 4: 4 past producers, 2 producers, 1 unknown.
2 still produce. What was taken out: Sand and Gravel, Construction, Stone, Crushed/Broken, Stone. 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
New Bedford, the town this property stands in, in 22 storm reports between 1996 and 2023: 11 flood, 4 thunderstorm wind, 3 flash flood, 2 heavy rain.
The reports record 1 death. 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.
The Swansea Mall parking lot flooded. In New Bedford: Acushnet Avenue and one lane of Route 18 North were closed due to flooding at their intersections with Hillman Street, Acushnet Avenue was also flooded at Wamsutta Street, Buttonwood Brook went out of its banks flooding several yards on Hawthorne Street, Sawyer and Purchase Streets were flooded. Several basements flooded on Riverside Avenue in Somerset. In Fall River: McGee and Cedar Streets, New Boston Road, and Eastern Avenue were flooded with vehicles stuck in flood waters. In addition, numerous basements were flooded. Union Street and Burt Street near Tremont Street were flooded in Taunton.
Flooding continued after three to five inches of rain fell across the region earlier in the day. In New Bedford, Parker Street near New Bedford High School was closed due to continued flooding. Dartmouth Street was washed out between Rockland and Spooner Streets. The road was closed for repairs as the asphalt washed away. In Acushnet, Main Street near Clems Way was flooded and impassable.
Flooding was reported in New Bedford on parts of Route 18, Purchase Street, and at the intersection of Rockdale, Coggeshall and Sawyer Streets. Route 18 was closed in both directions for a time because of water up to 30 inches deep flooding the roadway. The I-195 eastbound exit ramp to Route 18 South was closed for a brief time due to water covering the roadway. In Fairhaven, flooding affected Route 6 at Green Street as well as on Bridge and Spring Streets, where as much as 18 inches of water covered the road. Two cars were stranded on Adams Street after attempting to drive through the flooded roadway.
Minor street flooding occurred along Route 18 by the Royal restaurant and Tarkiln Hill Road and Kings Highway. A car was stuck in flood waters at Weld Street and Route 18.
In New Bedford, Dartmouth Street at Rockdale Avenue was flooded to the point where DPW assistance was required. Padanaram Ave. was also flooded. Report relayed by amateur radio.
Portions of Acushnet Avenue (Route 18) and Coggeshall Street were closed near Interstate 195 due to flooding. Several cars were stuck in flood waters on Route 6 near Route 140.
Several roads were closed due to flooding in New Bedford. Some of these include: Coggeshall Street, portions of Route 18, and Sawyer Street. In Somerset, Buffington Brook went out of its banks, flooding County Street and a nearby park.
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.
From the nomination file
3,225 words on record
When this property was proposed for the
National Register, someone wrote the case for it: what the building is,
and why it matters. That document is a federal record in the public domain.
It is quoted below word for word, never summarised. The text was read off the scanned case file by machine, so the
occasional stray character is the recogniser's and the 1970s
typewriter's.
Description of the property
The firehouse is an exterior masonry building, rectilinear in plan, with seventeen hundred square feet of ground floor area in the main structure. The addition on the west side in its present state contains approximately twenty-five hundred square feet. The only major change to the original plan was this addi- tional area added to the stable wing. The stable wing appears to have been a one story structure with a truss roof of some six hundred square feet. This one story wing was expanded to two stories with a false front, windows and roof corbeling to match the main fire house. This expansion increased the ground floor area to twenty-five hundred square feet. This work was completed prior to 1890.
The only other change made after this time seems to have been the widening, in the early nineteen hundreds, of the main fire doors to accomodate the change from horse drawn pumpers to motor driven fire vehicles. Though built in 1867, Fire Station #4 of the New Bedford Fire Department was constructed in the more traditional Federal Colonial style (or Adam's style) with influences of the revival bf the classics prevelant in the 1800's. The most apparent of these aspects is the Romanesque detailing of the hose tower. This includes the horizontal ribs and the intensional lighting of the upper structure by the use of slender false arches. Comparing this with the very heavy lintals and posts framing the main fire vehicle doorways boldly eccentuates the latter's im- portance in the scheme.
The major architectural features are the brick corbeling at the roof cornice and the hip roof angled toward the street intersection.
/ARCHITECT (a) Period - nineteenth century (b) Areas of Significance - (see above) (c) Fire Station #4, built in 1867 and located on the northwest corner of South Sixth Street and Bedford Street, is the oldest operational fire station in New Bedford and, so far as is known, in Massachusetts. Station firefighters possess the old log books that begin in 1867 and continue through 1913. These official daily logs contain not only detailed descriptions of every fire, but also the purchase receipts for various fire- fighting equipment and notes from monthly meetings. notes trom monenay In 1913, New Bedford switched from a volunteer fire department to paid firefighters at which time the second floor dormitories were expanded into the old hayloft section in the rear of the building. A.M.
Howland, station foreman in 1867 and later Mayor of New Bedford, was one of the more famous of the local personalities associated with Station #4. Within the next few years an addition designed by Frank Avrilio to the west side of Fire Station #4 was constructed to house the Fire Department's repair shop. After the turn of the century this repair shop became a storehouse for city property. The numerous and varied types of hand pumpers and fire engines statding itser,estatct the grenorveae oeto Bedtord fine te Department in particular and urban fire departments in general. The addition is currently being rehabilitated to house a Firemen's Museum which will include old firefighting equipment, 1og books, and photographs.
Meanwhile the crews at Fire Station #4 continue to respond to alarms just as they did over 100 years ago.
Quoted from the National Register nomination
for reference 75000250, 21 pages, held by the National Archives in Record
Group 79. See the
catalogue record.
Listed places nearby
6 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.
Specimens. Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), https://www.gbif.org/. Only records licensed CC0 or CC BY are used. Records licensed CC BY-NC are excluded because this site carries advertising. Images are checked individually and any whose licence is non-commercial, no-derivatives or unreadable is refused.
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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