Photographs from the nomination case file, National Park Service records.
Lake Street Fire Station
Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in
1980. 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
“(1.) John R., born July "27, 1869; was graduated from Boston University with the degrees of A.B., A.M. and Ph.D.; married Jennie Florence Ditmars (B.U. '96), June 27, 1907; is a member of the New England Conference.”
John Ainsworth Dunn, Gardner, Massachusetts (1908). Machine-read text.
one of 500 National Register listings in Worcester County · listed in 1980 · category: Building · one of 1 National Historic Landmarks in Worcester County.
National Register reference number.80001676- 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.
His first experience in the chair business was in 1852, when he worked in a factory in East Gardner, just below the farm of his greatgrandfather, giving three months' time to learn the art, which he has practised so many years. He also worked for a time in Fitchburg, and afterward in Ashburnham. In 1855, with less than fifty dollars in his pocket, he came to Gardner, finding employment in the works of the Heywood Chair Manufacturing Company, where he remained for the next nine years.
In connection with the manufacturing plant at Gardner, offices, and warehouses are maintained at Chicago, Boston, and St. Paul, and in addition to the business passing through these houses, Mr. Dunn has a large direct trade with the principal chair manufacturers at home and abroad.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 76 fires within 5 miles of Lake Street Fire Station between
2015 and 2020, burning about 38 acres in total. None started naturally. 2 were 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
44
Smoking
11
Missing data/not specified/undetermined
10
Recreation and ceremony
4
Misuse of fire by a minor
3
Arson/incendiarism
2
Equipment and vehicle use
1
Railroad operations and maintenance
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 533 specimens
collected within 10 miles of Lake Street Fire Station between 1870 and
1973: 277 Plantae, 162 Animalia, 89 Fungi, 3 Protozoa, 1 Unrecorded, 1 Chromista. 12 distinct Species records are shown.
Collected by A., A. B. Seymour, A. F. Newton 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
8 workings within 5 miles of Lake Street Fire Station: 6 past producers, 2 producers.
2 still produce. What was taken out: Sand and Gravel, Construction. 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
Gardner, the town this property stands in, in 26 storm reports between 1995 and 2020: 14 hail, 6 thunderstorm wind, 2 lightning, 2 flood.
The reports record 2 injuries. 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.
A tree and several large tree limbs on Edgell STreet in Gardner were downed by thunderstorm winds. Trees in Ashuburnham also were downed with one blocking a road.
In Gardner, there were many areas of flooding. There was one foot of water on a section of Route 2A at 618 PM EST. A car was stuck in flooding on Timpany Blvd. at 643 PM EST. Chestnut Street at Union Square was flooded and impassable at 648 PM EST. A basement was flooded on Dean Street at 658 PM EST.
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
1,522 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 Lake Street Fire Station is located at the northwest corner of Lake and Richmond Streets on a site which overlooks the Heywood-Wakefield Manufacturing complex (potential N.R.). Built in 1884, the fire station is a two and one-half storey brick structure containing elements of Italianate and Victorian Gothic design to which one-storey wing has been added at the station's southwest corner. The main (original) body of the station has a rectangular plan and is enclosed by a slate-: covered pitched roof. The facade (southeast elevation) is nearly symmetrically arranged containing four low-arched entries for engines in its northern four bays and a smaller entry in its southernmost bay. Each of the four entries rises from a dressed granite base to an undecorated brick arch.
It is likely that these arches were added to the building in the early twentieth century, replacing an unknown original arrangement of entries. Centered at the facade's second storey is a three-sided oriel window which is flanked by two widely spaced windows on each side. Each window except the oriel, contains 2/2 sash set in a brick surround with a rock-faced stone sill and low-arched head with stone springers. The cornice is set on a base of brick corbelling and is decorated with paired brackets. Centered above the cornice is a decorative gable containing an oculus. End walls (southwest and northeast) were originally identical, although the 'southwest elevation is now partially blocked by a one-storey addition.
Each end elevation contained three symmetrically placed windows at both the first and second stories. These windows are set in surrounds, identical to those of the facade's second storey. Above the second storey each end wall has a high gable, trimmed by brick corbelling and a cornice with paired brackets.
/ARCHITECT unknown The Lake Street Fire Station possesses integrity of design, location, setting and use, having served as a Fire Station for nearly a century. The building's eclectic Combination of an Italianate style plan and decorative details with the limited use of Victorian Gothic polychromy in its window surrounds mark it as a good local ex- ample of Victorian civic architecture. The apparent early twentieth century altera- tions of the station's engine entries reflect the building's adaptation to more modern fire fighting equipment than that which it had been planned to contain. Upon completion in 1884, the Lake Street Fire Station, then one of the city's largest public buildings, served a variety of uses.
The building's cellar contained a "lock- up", now used as a boiler room, while the second story contained classroom space which was used as the "O1d Bell School House" until 1890 when a separate school house was built on Chestnut Street. Because of its location at the edge of a residential neighbor- hood, the station's hall was used occasionally as a community hall for public meetings. Although currently in use as a Fire House, the Lake Street Fire Station is scheduled to be closed following the completion of a new central/downtown Fire Station.
Quoted from the National Register nomination
for reference 80001676, 9 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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