San Francisco Fire Department Engine Co. Number 2

Style: Beaux-Arts
City: San Francisco, CA
Collection: the city beautiful

Built in 1908 at 460 Bush Street, this firehouse was designed by Newton J. Tharp, who served as San Francisco's city architect. It went up in the Beaux-Arts style favored for civic buildings of the era, and the National Register added it individually in 2002.

the building

Facade materials. The two-story, three-bay firehouse is clad in warm gray stone, with a projecting entablature banding the top of the wall and a raised parapet capping the roofline — formal dressing for a working firehouse.

the style

Beaux-Arts gave a municipal fire station the same academic classical vocabulary — entablature, symmetry, dressed stone — the city was applying to its grander civic buildings in the early 1900s, signaling that firehouses too were public architecture worth designing formally.

the architect

Newton J. Tharp served as San Francisco's city architect, responsible for municipal buildings like this firehouse in the early 1900s.

significance

The firehouse was individually listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2002.

nearby

San Francisco Curb Exchange Building 470 ft · Neoclassical · 1923
Hallidie Building 520 ft
555 California Street 0.1 mi · 1969
Russ Building 0.1 mi · Gothic Revival · 1927
Old Saint Mary's Cathedral 0.1 mi · Gothic Revival · 1854
Commercial Union Assurance Building 0.1 mi · Renaissance Revival · 1921

All 99 buildings in San Francisco