North Billerica Fire Station

The North Billerica Fire Station, Station 2 of the Billerica Fire Department, stands on the north side of Lowell Street opposite Colson Street, at the southeast corner of a 27.5-acre town tract that runs down across the Broad Meadow toward the Concord River. It was begun in 1965 and opened in 1967 to replace the fire station in the ground floor of Union Hall on Station Street. It was designed by the architects Lord and Den Hartog and built by the Lamont Company of West Newton, a builder of prefabricated buildings, out of precast, prestressed concrete double tees, a system then little more than ten years in general use.

North Billerica had its own fire company long before it had this building. After incendiary fires at the mills in the 1840s the mill owners formed a fire brigade, which kept an 1852 Hunneman hand engine, "Old Hero," in a barn on Wilson Street. When Union Hall burned in February 1891 the town rebuilt it with the fire station on the ground floor and a hose-drying tower on its west front, paying for it with the insurance and the $1,530 from the sale of the old engine house on Wilson Street. A Silsby steam fire engine came in 1892, and horses were kept at the hall to draw it. From the fall of 1953 the station had permanent firemen on duty, and rooms were fitted up so that they could live there. In 1963 the department ran three stations, the Central Station (Engine Co. 1 and Ladder Co. 1), the North Station (Engine Co. 2) and the Pinehurst Station (Engine Co. 3), with two permanent men on duty at the North Station and one call man; its only engine was a 1948 Mack 500-gallon pumper.

The land was a tract of "twenty one acres one rood and eighteen rods" between "the road leading to Chelmsford Neck," now Lowell Street, and the Middlesex Canal, bounded by land of Oliver Farmer and by a ditch along the lands of Timothy Manning, John Rogers and Luther French. Levi Sprake, whose own land lay to the west, sold it on December 25, 1820 to John Mixer for $245.67. Mixer, a boatman who lived by the canal locks, pledged it in mortgages of 1838 and 1844 and left it by his will of 1857 to his wife Nancy Mixer. She gave it in 1880 to their daughters Edith Mixer and Lucy Emerson, and in 1894 Edith and Lucy's widower sold it "with all the buildings" to Lawrence B. Gannon for $1,550, keeping the right to live in the house for two years. Gannon sold it in 1899 to William B. Dane, and Dane in 1900 to Thomas F. Fay of Lowell. After Fay's death his heirs released their shares in 1915 to Joseph F. Fay, who sold the farm in August 1918 to Frank and Kada Wojtowicz; they sold it the same day to John Sass of Lowell.

After John Sass's death, about 1921, the low meadow lay unused and the taxes went unpaid. The town bought it at tax sales in 1937 and 1944, and both times the Sass family redeemed it, Frank Sass of South Boston in 1942. On June 20, 1952 the collector took "Part of Broadmeadow" from Frank Sass for the 1950 taxes, a total of $8.30, and in December 1954 the treasurer's deed foreclosing the tax titles on land of low value made the town the full owner. The flood plain was hard to use, but the corner by Lowell Street was high enough to build on.

The old station was failing. In 1961 Chief Paul H. Roper reported that the apparatus floor and its supports needed repair, and in 1962 that the second floor had "not been used for many years" and that the first was also in poor condition. A $22,000 repair article was referred to a study committee. In 1963 the chief proposed taking a lot at Elm Street and Talbot Avenue for $12,000, but that article was postponed indefinitely. On March 9, 1963 the annual town meeting instead created a North Billerica Fire Station Building Committee: Lawrence O. Bourque, chairman, Arthur R. Hallenborg, vice-chairman, Theodore N. Colas, secretary, Charles J. Sullivan and Roger C. Gosselin, with the fire chief as an ex officio member. It voted $1,000 for an architect's sketches, and a special town meeting gave $100 for the committee to choose a site and take an option on it, by 150 votes to 4. The committee chose the Lowell Street corner, west of the river, so that the people on that side would still have fire protection if the bridges were lost in a flood like those of 1936 and 1955. In 1964 the New England Insurance Rating Association also recommended that the North Billerica station "be replaced immediately by a new building of modern fire-resistive construction located at the proposed site near Lowell and Colson Streets," large enough for an engine company and a ladder company.

The committee's first design, with three bays, living quarters and offices, was estimated at $121,900. The 1964 town meeting voted for it 87 to 48 and, after a reconsideration, 93 to 50, short of the two-thirds needed for the bond issue each time. The plan was cut to two bays, and in 1965, after the town's fire insurance rating had dropped from Class B to Class C, the town meeting voted $94,800 under Article 32, $9,800 from taxes and $85,000 in five-year bonds, by 140 votes to 18. The contract went to the Lamont Company in July 1965. The town paid the contractor $15,010 and the architects $5,497.92 that year and the contractor $68,197.95 in 1966, when another $6,000 was voted for the extra costs; the firemen did part of the work themselves. A new 1,000-gallon pumper, bought for $30,981, was delivered in April 1966 and placed in service at Engine Co. 2. At the end of 1966 the chief reported "the new Fire Station on Lowell Street in North Billerica is almost completed." The architects' final report went to the Selectmen in May 1967, when they also approved razing Union Hall, and the station was in use that year.

The building faces south to Lowell Street behind a concrete apron for washing down the trucks. Its two apparatus doors stand beside a pedestrian entrance with the department's crest and the number 2, and its long side walls show the ribs of the concrete tees. The ground falls away behind it to the bed of the old canal, where a lower floor for storage and a workshop opens to the rear; the station sits on the site of a former canal lock basin. The windows on the east side have been altered and a rubber roof put on. It is still the fully staffed North Billerica station of the Billerica Fire Department, with an engine and a rescue boat for the river, while the rest of the town's tract remains open meadow. The Center station and the Pinehurst station have since been rebuilt on new sites, and new stations were added in East and West Billerica.

References

1. MACRIS BIL.316
2. Billerica assessor, parcel 9-9-0, 21 Lowell St: Town of Billerica, fire station, 27.520 acres; current deed Book 1202 Page 41
3. Annual Report of the Town of Billerica, 1962: fire chief on the North Station (Union Hall); 1963 warrant articles 22-25 for a new North Billerica station
4. Annual Report of the Town of Billerica, 1963: North Billerica Fire Station Building Committee appointed (Art. 23); site option voted at the special town meeting
5. Annual Report of the Town of Billerica, 1964: Article 80 ($121,900) defeated; insurance rating bureau recommends a new station near Lowell and Colson Streets
6. Annual Report of the Town of Billerica, 1965: Article 32, $94,800 voted 140 to 18; first payments to contractor and architect
7. Annual Report of the Town of Billerica, 1966: new 1,000-gallon pumper for Engine Co. 2; station "almost completed"; contractor paid $68,197.95

Title References Expand all

Recorded is Book/Page at the Middlesex North Registry of Deeds unless noted; Probate # is a Middlesex probate case, Ctf a Land Court certificate of title.