Description of Historic Place

Fire Hall No. 3, a solid 2 1/2-storey brick and stone structure with a dominant tower, built in 1904, stands near the Main Street business district, industrial buildings and homes in Winnipeg's Point Douglas area. The City of Winnipeg designation applies to the building on its footprint and the following interior elements: finishes, partitions and tin ceilings.

Heritage Value

Fire Hall No. 3, a symmetrically proportioned building embellished with Romanesque and Classical details, is the largest and most elaborate of Winnipeg's remaining early twentieth-century fire stations. Its spacious and ornamented design, based on an efficient, economical model developed by architects Alexander and William Melville and used to construct 14 local fire halls over a decade of rapid city growth, befitted the building's role as the fire department's north Winnipeg headquarters. Adaptable to changes in equipment and technology, the remarkably intact structure remained a working fire hall for nearly nine decades. It now functions as a museum displaying all facets of firefighting, including vintage equipment, and is a conspicuous fixture in its Point Douglas neighbourhood.

Source: City of Winnipeg Committee on Planning and Community Services Minute, January 28, 1991

Character-Defining Elements

Key elements that define the site character of Fire Hall No. 3 include:
- the building's placement near southwest Maple Street and Higgins Avenue, facing east
- the building's proximity to other historic commercial and residential structures, including the Canadian Pacific Railway Station on Higgins

Key external elements that define the fire hall's efficient design, detailing and original function include:
- the substantial, 2 1/2-storey rectangular form of the main volume, symmetrically composed, with a stone foundation, buff brick walls and a truncated, moderately pitched hip roof broken by front (east) and rear gable ends
- the prominent north hose-drying tower, more than 25 metres high, with a modillioned cornice, tall parapet, flagpole and numerous windows of various sizes on all sides
- the Romanesque Revival features, including the rusticated stone cladding on the front main floor, the large round-arched equipment doors and smaller arched double-door entrance with a fanlight, the round-headed tower windows with keystones, the rusticated stone lug sills and lintels, the brick corbelling, etc.
- Classical features such as the front oriel window with a smooth-cut stone base and a Palladian-like window above, the numerous tall rectangular flat-headed openings in singles and pairs on three sides, etc.
- the words 'FIRE STATION' above the main entrance and the date '1904' in the fanlight
- additional features such as the tall corbelled brick chimneys, painted wood trim, etc.
- the low plain flat-roofed brick stable and hay loft attached to the rear, with a west wall containing centred main-floor and loft doors and numerous windows

Key elements that define the fire hall's utilitarian interior character include:
- the largely unaltered open front equipment room with a concrete floor and rear doorways to the stable
- the intact second-floor central hall, bedrooms, sitting rooms and washrooms, with high transom windows over the doorway) and a wooden stairwell at the north end
- two strategically located poles running from the upper floor to the equipment room
- finishes and materials such as the well-preserved tin ceilings, stained-glass transoms, etc.