Fire Alarm Boxes

[turkeycall]

I've been away from Detroit for a lot of years and I haven't thought about this in a long while.

Growing up in the '50s, there was a fire alarm on a telephone/power pole pole at the corner of Farmbrook and Frankfort [[a couple of blocks from Balduck Park. Do fire alarm boxes still exist in Detroit.

[DetroitPlanner]

No fireboxes left. I remember them all over the place in the 1970's.

[rooms222]

On ebay, they are selling the original Free Press photo from 1963 that they used in 1967 when the city started considering phasing out the boxes.

[Wesley Mouch]

I remember being totally fascinated growing up in the 60s in Detroit.

There was a single wire running along the telephone poles connecting all of these serially to the fire station. [[I was also fascinated by the PLC wires running around on those white insulators heading just to schools, police, fire, etc. during the day. At night, it was Sputnik and its friends.)

Later, I found out that these machines were basically telegraphs that 'tapped' out a code by breaking the circuit [[I believe). xxx x xxxxx would indicate box 315 was reporting. A receiver in the station which I've never seen recorded or signalled the firemen. I'm sure the telephone was its demise -- with the coffin nailed by 911 service.

[56packman]

Westley hit it right--911 made the boxes redundant. A company called Tarnow Electric got the contract to remove them all. I went there in about 1980 and they had a pyrimid of fire boxes about 20' tall, they were for sale, $25/ea, the more you bought, the cheaper they got. We all bought one [[or more). Another friend thought it would be relly cool to have the box, and the cast iron pole they mounted on, so he went and harvested one off of a street corner in the Michigan/Livernois area. He stripped it, and repainted it red and white, turned out beautiful. Friends would come to his house and see it and want that same set up. He had a magnetic sign made for his truck that said "City Services" with a bogus phone number, had his cutting torches in the back of his truck and a safety barrier with flasing light [[liberated from some construction site) and he harvested a number of the poles. He always wore coveralls and had a clipboard with a generic form--the kind with different colored carbonless copies. Whenever a cop car came by he grabbed the clip board, looked at it, looked back at the pole, the street sign and back at the clipboard/form and went about his business. No cops ever stopped to see what he was doing.

[Meddle]

This is what was in the fire houses:



The left side in this picture is just a take-up spool for the paper tape. The device on the right is the telegraph receiver. For every 'tick', a punch was triggered that put a hole in the paper tape. So in your box 315 example, there would be a corresponding series of holes, 3, then a space, then 1, another space, then 5 holes.

When the box was tapped out, every station in the city received it. They had a corresponding card file and run board to know which boxes they rolled on.


There were also several banks of these in the old Central Office. The street pull boxes recorded only on the registers at Central. Dispatchers on duty would re-transmit the box number to the station house system.

Depending on who the dispatcher was, they would sometimes hold the radio mic open and allow the 'tapping' to go out over the radio while the telegraph system was running. Once the tapping ended, they would state something to the effect of:

"Box Alarm, a fire, Box 315. Companies responding, fire reported at [[address), Engine XX you're due".

[Meddle]

Before the days of widespread telephone and radio usage, the watch desk in each station would be manned 24 hours a day. When a Box came in that they were due on, the watchman would manually sound the gong to wake everybody up. Later on, the gong was automated as well as the station lights.

There was also a log book at each watch desk in which the watchman would manually write down the box number, location, time and which companies rolled.

I know this system continued into the 90s sometime, long after the street boxes were removed. It was eventually replaced by computer terminals. While the numbering system is no longer in use in the same manner, the last time I listened to DFD radio, they still used the Box Alarm terminology when dispatching runs.

[cman710]

Growing up in New York City, I always noticed the fire alarm boxes, and until the cell phone era, I think they were very useful. As this article discusses, the city has tried to get rid of them but a judge did not allow it. Many of the New York City boxes have a pull lever for fire and a separate one for the police, though as this article discusses, it remains unclear how many actually work.

In Massachusetts, the cities of Cambridge and Somerville also still have fire alarm boxes. In fact, I have seen them placed even in new developments. This link includes some very basic information about Somerville's system, which appears to be fully operational and well maintained.

[scottn55]

No fireboxes left. I remember them all over the place in the 1970's.

There was one near my grandmother's house in Royal Oak up through the mid-'90s. It probably wasn't functional and could still be there... haven't looked for it in a while but I thought it was pretty cool when I was a kid. It was at the corner of Catalpa and Maple St. The old fire alarm building on E. Sixth in Royal Oak is still there and has been converted into a private residence. It's an interesting little piece of history.

[cman710]

There was one near my grandmother's house in Royal Oak up through the mid-'90s. It probably wasn't functional and could still be there... haven't looked for it in a while but I thought it was pretty cool when I was a kid. It was at the corner of Catalpa and Maple St. The old fire alarm building on E. Sixth in Royal Oak is still there and has been converted into a private residence. It's an interesting little piece of history.

In Google Street View, I do not see any fire alarm box at that intersection, but there are two very brightly painted fire hydrants. I wonder if there are any remaining call boxes in Detroit? While they were generally removed, I would not be surprised to find a disconnected one someplace like the grounds of the Packard plant.

[Hermod]

In the forties and fifties, the closest one to us was at Nottingham and Yorkshire. Our fire station was at Lakepointe and Whittier.

[cla1945]

Meddle, did you know any of the dispatchers in Fire Communications at 697 Macomb?

[Carey]

Wasn't the growing number of false alarms one of the reasons that the city began pulling the boxes?
BTW: I was in San Francisco this summer. Red alarm boxes sit on street corners all over town.

[Meddle]

Two names that come to mind are Maury Roche and Earl Joiner

[Meddle]

Wasn't the growing number of false alarms one of the reasons that the city began pulling the boxes?

Yes, people pulling boxes was a big factor in the City pulling boxes.

The big thing for Devil's Night was pulling boxes. After the City started pulling boxes, the Devils had to find something else to do.

[Gune]

We have a couple of departments out here on Long Island, NY that have boxes - one is New Hyde Park - and not only are there boxes, there are external air horns - known as "diaphones" that sound out the box number [[as a gong would) with ear-shattering blasts. There used to be over 20 departments with box systems, we are down to a mere handful. And the residents have almost no tolerance for sirens and air horns.

[M CD M]

Last time I was in the D fallout shelter sign hunting, I found this....

https://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msid=210489925846179065852.00047482480e6c592fae c&msa=0&ll=42.36575,-83.12331&spn=0.00283,0.009495

Kimberly Court / Mackinaw Street You may have to go to streetview to see it.

[turkeycall]

One of our older neighbors warned the kids that to turn in a false alarm was illegal and that a fine - or maybe jail time - would be imposed for doing it.

But then he added: The fire department puts a powder on the little hook that you pull down to activate the alarm. The powder turns your finger blue and you can't wash it off. If the firemen show up, don't find a fire, and you've got a blue finger, they'll take you to jail.

[Jimaz]

One of our older neighbors warned the kids that to turn in a false alarm was illegal and that a fine - or maybe jail time - would be imposed for doing it.

But then he added: The fire department puts a powder on the little hook that you pull down to activate the alarm. The powder turns your finger blue and you can't wash it off. If the firemen show up, don't find a fire, and you've got a blue finger, they'll take you to jail.

That powder is iodine crystals. It's more of a purple color and it works very well for that purpose.

[izzyindetroit]

I noticed this modern era "box" on a old metal pole the other day. Can anyone confirm if the pole used to be for a fire alarm box? Any guesses on what is in the box now?

Near the corner of Chalmers and Chandler Park Dr.

http://goo.gl/maps/rM1hN

[MikeM]

Traffic signal control box.

[Mikeg]

Click here to view a color slide taken during the 1967 riots at the corner of Grand River and Livernois. On the opposite side of the street from the photographer is a fire alarm box [[beneath the MOTEL sign).

Click on that color slide image and in the comments you will find the auto dealer ad from this old DY thread that enabled me to identify the location of the street corner where the photo was taken.