History of the Tappan Fire Department

At the beginning of the twentieth century, residents of Tappan, NY began to discuss the need of forming a fire brigade or company. Until this time, neighbors were expected to lend a hand whenever fire threatened people or property. Bucket brigades would be formed and water was taken from a nearby cistern, stream or pond. Since 1901, Sparkill’s newly-formed John Paulding Engine Co. was always available to come to the aid of Tappan residents and business people. By early 1907, these solutions were in need of improvement. Tappan was growing rapidly in population and the old family-to-family connections that had been present in our hamlet since 1686 were disappearing. Without an organization, we could not feel sure that men would turn out to help, since many of them now commuted by train to New York City.

An organizational meeting of interested residents was held at the '76 House on February 6, 1907. Temporary chairman Macey Demming was selected to lead the men in getting organized. He appointed a by-laws committee and apparatus committee to begin with. It was decided that the interest existed among the men to proceed and further organizational meetings were called for February 20 and 27. Any man signing on as inactive or active at these meetings, and most importantly paid up in dues, would be considered a “charter member.” At the February 20 meeting, Mr. Nelson Goodsell was selected as president and a slate of house officers was elected. The apparatus committee recommended that we form as a hook and ladder fire company and the membership agreed. After the Feb. 20 business meeting ended, the “active” members then met to select Harry Post as the first foreman. On March 6, he resigned for personal reasons and James Ottignon, his 1st assistant, took over as foreman. The group also decided to incorporate right away and selected the name Volunteer Fire Association of Tappan, Inc. This was granted by NY State on March 28, 1907.

The apparatus committee came up with a used hook & ladder truck from the Tuckahoe, NY fire department, through a Mr. Williams of the Wonder Fire Company. We paid $375 for the truck and $8 for transportation plus the ferry toll. The truck was brought to Tappan and serviced and re-painted. Before that job was done, we had a serious fire at the Thompson residence on Brandt Street in July of 1907. We had a very tough job extinguishing the flames even with plenty of manpower and buckets. The Sparkill was used as the source of water, a distance of about 600 feet. Because of this, a special meeting was called on July 29th that would drastically change the direction of our department. It was unanimously agreed that we should have a hose company and a separate hook & ladder company, under the same association. It was further agreed that each current department member could decide which company he would serve with. With luck, or by design, eleven men went with the ladder truck and nine to the hose company. The by-laws were redrawn by the September 7th meeting and at a special meeting held on September 16, 1907 Henry Borchers (pictured at right) was elected the first chief of the VFAT. Each company, Rescue Hose and Hook & Ladder had its own foreman and assistants.

The men voted to spend up to $200 for a pump with hose and a cart. These funds had just been raised at our first annual bazaar in early July. We managed to secure a used Barnes double-action hand pump along with some hose for $200. It was purchased, I believe, through a company or individual named M H Chase. That lead to our calling this vehicle a 1907 Chase pumper. The hose cart that was donated to us by a Mr. Danforth was found to be totally unsuitable, so Mr. George Van Zilen, Sr. and George Jr., blacksmiths and charter members, built a new one from scratch for a total cost of materials of $25. This small white-painted wagon could be pulled by hand if no horse team were available and was beautifully lettered RESCUE HOSE CO. NO.1 on its sideboards. The photo at left shows driver William Cockshute in front of what is now Giulio's Restaurant on Washington Street. George Jr., by the way, was the father of our Helen Van Zilen Keller, very active 50-year member of our ladies auxiliary. The hook & ladder rig was finished on August 12th, and by October of 1907, we had in our possession both trucks. The owners of horse teams nearby the center of town would race to be the first to arrive to pull a truck at an alarm of fire. For this service, the first team’s owner was paid $5 and the second was paid $3, quite a sum when $10 was a very respectable weekly pay.

The grounds committee secured a temporary building on Washington Lane that we could use as a firehouse until we found a permanent home. It was a former blacksmith shop owned by a Mrs. Van Blarcom. We got the building rent free until either we moved or she rented it out. This is where the bazaar was held annually in the month of July from 1907-1910. The north wall foundation of this building can still be seen on Washington Lane directly behind the dentist office. In June of 1907, this committee came to the meeting floor with two separate offers for land to build a firehouse. One was from Charles Smith for a 100’ x 150’ lot on School Street (Conklin Avenue) for $200 payable when the department found the funds. The other was for a similar plot on Burton’s Road (Brandt Street) from a Mr. G. Smith for $300. We accepted the offer from Charles Smith with thanks. Charles Smith lived in a very large and beautiful home on the Sparkill Road (Washington Street), now Giulio's Restaurant. In early 1908, Mr. Richard B. Haring, our treasurer, brokered a deal for a better location for the building at the intersection of Main Street and Sparkill Road. The deal was $475 plus $25 in legal fees for the property that the firehouse is built on. This parcel was purchased from Mrs. Catherine Stephens, an elderly widow. She had been the wife of Dr. James Stephens, former Rockland County Coroner and physician. He was also the owner of a few buildings on Main Street in Tappan, including the '76 House. The property on Conklin Avenue was now returned to Mr C. Smith with our sincerest thanks for his generous offer.

These men that came before us took a back seat to no one when it came to creative thinking. We needed a building, and quickly, but we had no money. Since we were a not-for-profit membership corporation, borrowing for a building mortgage would be a problem. They formed the Firemen’s Holding Company of Tappan, Inc. This was a stock corporation, set up by the firemen solely to secure and pay off a mortgage of up to $6,000. The holding company held in trust all of our possessions and sold $25 bonds to pay down the mortgage. The men sold most of the bonds locally and bought them back slowly over the next 18 years. In April of 1926, the Firemen’s Holding Company turned over a paid-up deed to the VFAT and then went out of business, their job completed.

The first design of our building called for a one story brick building, 45’ x 35’. After much consideration for the future expansion, space for utilities, and a hall for social events and most important, fund raising, we arrived at the structure we know today. It is about 72’ x 36’, almost 40’ tall, and sports a stucco finish because brick was too expensive. The walls of the firehouse are a foot thick solid concrete and bluestone for the entire first and second floors. The floors are held up with twelve by twelve solid wood carrying beams and upright posts, while the outside walls are secured every twelve feet by a rod and turnbuckle arrangement. They had the house that stood here removed in late 1908 and awarded a contract for the new firehouse in early 1909. The building was ready for use in May of 1911, and a parade complete with a brass band was held in the hamlet to escort the trucks from Washington Lane to the new quarters. We had a ten-percent cost over-run and the finish price was $5,500.

Another part of the funding of this department was an agreement with Orangetown to provide the constables with a lock up. The 10’x10’ room in the northeast corner of the firehouse was used as a jail for about ten years. This is why the interior walls of this room are of solid concrete also. Mrs. Barretta, who lived behind the firehouse on Main Street, cooked for and fed the prisoners when we had one. Emmett Maines, the Grand Marshall of the 2003 Hudson Valley Parade and a past Orangetown Police Chief, has very vivid memories of bringing these men food and talking to them. The prisoner would be there only until arrangements could be made to transport him to the county jail. For this consideration, the VFAT was paid $200 per year. This arrangement continued until 1919 and many years later the two-foot drop into this cell was filled in and leveled. This then became the chiefs’ office and later also the radio room until 1990.

In June of 1908, the fire company petitioned the Rockland County Board of Supervisors to create the Tappan Fire District from the boundaries of Tappan School District #5. The reason we did this was that there existed a law that a fire company was due two-percent of the fire insurance premiums paid to foreign (out-of-state) insurance companies by property owners in their area. However, a defined district was a requirement of the law. In 1911, the Tappan Fire District was created and the first commissioners were Daniel J. Mack, Harry N. Post, William Wilson, Charles Pike, and Albert W. Burton. They were voted in on May 4, 1911 for terms ranging from one through five years.

Our first few fire hydrants were installed in 1912, mainly on the Sparkill Road and Main Streets. However, the Sparkill and private cisterns and ponds remained the best source of water for many more years for fire protection.

Our first spectacular fire was one that seriously affected the entire community. In September of 1908, just two days into the school year, the Conklin Avenue School caught fire and burned to the foundation, despite all of the men’s best efforts. This was judged to have been an accidental fire and no one was hurt. The Washington Street School was then built, but the classes were held for two years in various buildings in Tappan. A photograph of the remaining chimney and foundation hung on the walls downstairs in the firehouse for over 70 years. Unfortunately, it was loaned to a local newspaper publisher in 1982 to do a story on our 75th anniversary parade. The photo, along with two others, was misplaced and never found. 

In 1925, the fire department decided that we needed to concentrate on being an engine company, and the two company department was abolished with the revision that year of our by-laws. The chief now had a foreman and 1st and 2nd Assistant foremen. Other than the names of the office and the amount of officers, this has remained to this day. We have a rule, adopted in 1925, that we would no longer allow another separate company in the VFAT. 

In 1930, the wives, mothers and daughters of our members formed the Ladies Auxiliary of the Volunteer Fire Association of Tappan. During their first few years, in the dark days of the depression, these ladies helped significantly in raising funds to pay for our first motorized pump truck, a 1930 Ahrens Fox Quad, 21-600. As a matter of fact, when one of the payments were due, the VFAT found itself short, so the ladies put the cash up to keep the truck from being repossessed. They ran movies, dances, trips, minstrel shows and dinners to raise the money needed to run and expand a fire department. Besides that, they have for over 70 years served food and drink at emergencies and at times helped the men with brush fires and various other calls. The first president of the ladies was Edith Jones, who we were able to honor with a special presentation during our 1982 parade past her home on Washington Street.

The coming of war in 1941 caught the entire fire service short. Ladies auxiliary members and our inactive members were called on to chip in. Also, we temporarily allowed sixteen year old members. During WWII, Camp Shanks swallowed up more than half of our fire district, mostly farms at that time. After the war, Shanks Village was created by the government and NY area colleges so that returning GI’s could stay in affordable housing while attending school under the GI Bill. After the village was no longer needed in 1956, major changes were in store for Tappan.

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The US government had possession of tremendous tracts of fine property in the Orangetown area and much of it was located in the Tappan Fire District. Major pieces and individual lots were sold to developers at auctions in New York City in the mid-1950’s. Our post-Korean War and WWII families were seeing a tremendous period of economic growth and population growth. Over a thousand homes were built in the western side of our district between 1960 and 1975. This caused the center of our fire district population to move about one mile west of where it had been before the wars. It also increased the need for more equipment and manpower. Because of this and also the very active railroad line, the district looked toward the western part of town for an additional location.

Seeing these events beginning to unfold, some of our leaders at the time took action to see that we all ended up with what was needed. The fire company could no longer afford to raise the money needed to fund its operation, we needed another fire station on the west side of town, people were actively starting to form a volunteer ambulance corps, separate from the fire company, and the Tappan American Legion had a need to find a permanent meeting place. Most of the same people were involved in all of these situations. After two years of very intense work, the South Orangetown Ambulance Corps was begun with many of the original members being Tappan firemen and SOAC had a piece of property on Independence Avenue to build a barn in the future. The Tappan Legion had lifetime rights to meet in the Washington Street firehouse and had some money in the bank. The Tappan Fire District took possession of all firefighting apparatus and equipment and were from then on responsible to raise tax money to pay for those needs so that the VFAT could concentrate on training instead of fundraising. Property at 300 Western Highway was in the hands of the Tappan Fire District for a future firehouse. The VFAT had an agreement in writing with the Tappan Fire District that the district would never enter into an agreement with any new fire company formed in Tappan, while the VFAT was a viable, active fire company.

Forty-seven years later, it is very obvious that these men knew exactly what they were doing. We have grown in every way since then. The fire department is blessed with many talented and dedicated individuals. The residents and businesses of the Tappan Fire District are professionally protected by these well-trained people and should be very proud of them. Recently, we have changed our by-laws to allow younger firefighters in at age sixteen and we have a couple of female firefighters. We are especially proud of the fact that in our company we have representatives of many cultural, religious, and racial backgrounds. We have just come through a period of tremendous growth in membership and have about a seventy percent retention rate with those new members.

Also, for the first time since 1908, the Volunteer Fire Association of Tappan purchased real estate in the year 2000. We bought the former gas station across the Sparkill from our headquarters on Washington Street so that we would have future parking and expansion space. We were able to take this blighted parcel of land and turn it into something to be proud of. We in this day and age hope that by doing this, we are planning for those that come after us, just as the past members of our fire department have done for us.

Thomas J Quinn Sr 
Tappan, NY
March, 2003