By kmackenzie - Mar 9, 2010 | 3 comments

Concord is home to many great museums and historic sites – the Museum of New Hampshire History, the McAuliffe-Shepard Discovery Center and the Pierce Manse come to mind – but did you know that the fire department has its own museum?

It's actually been around for a while, though we only found out about it a month ago when an anonymous caller suggested we check it out. Firefighter Jim Cournoyer is the unofficial curator, and he showed us the department's collection last week.

The museum's first home was in the old Central Station on Warren Street. When that station closed in the early '80s, the museum moved to the Broadway station. Space got tight, and in 1995, the collection made its way to Central Station on North Main Street. Jim says he'd like to see the museum in a more accessible location, but for now he feels lucky to have the space at Central.

Occupying a small room in the basement, the collection contains items from the original Warren Street museum and items donated along the way. There are old photos and log books, helmets, comics poking fun at the fire chief from the early 1900s and former dress uniforms.

Leather fire buckets are among the museum's oldest items – their use dates back to the late 1700s. When there was a fire, a chain of people would form from the closest water source, and the buckets were handed up and down the line to douse the fire.

There's also a trumpet that survived a downtown fire at Coffins Hay Store in 1887. Band members were rehearsing in the building when the fire started. When smoke filled the room, they threw down their instruments and jumped out of the window to safety.

One of the more playful exhibits was the toy fire trucks. Firefighters at the Warren Street station had an entire workshop devoted to making toy fire trucks for children. Each one was built from scratch and painted – many had “CFD” written on the side. The tradition came to an end for liability reasons – the paint and some of the parts contained lead.

A big, heavy firebox occupies one corner of the room – you can look inside to see how the mechanism works. There's also an old machine that was used to tap out the location of the firebox alarm. When the alarm was activated, it rang to all of the fire departments in the city. Then, firefighters waited for the machine to punch the number of holes that corresponded to the box number. A fire fighter counted the holes and compared the number to a chart that listed all of the box locations.

The fire boxes – stand-alone pull-down fire alarms – can still be found around the city today. The really old ones have a key hole that looks like it would fit a skeleton key.

The museum is open to the public, but visitors need to call ahead and make an appointment. For more information, call fire department headquarters at 225-8650.