Current Events

Currently owned by a professor at RISD. Rumored he bought it years ago for a small sum and has a great studio inside. Don’t think it is live/work. It is on a very unassuming street off Broadway. We wonder when it was built and how large the fire trucks were, because the front door doesn’t look big enough for anything if it is original. The outside has been beautifully restored and cleaned, it’s only too bad the Fire Department took the letters off the front.

History

Taken from ProvPlan.org: It is a two-story, end-gable, brick building with a round-arch central entrance on the façade set below a fanlight with tracery. A sign reading: “Engine Station 9” spans the central entrance. The building is embellished by a symmetrical façade, center entry, corbelled cornice, and arched Italianate-style windows. A pedestrian entrance is located in a brick ell on the side elevation that houses a stairway. The entrance is set below a blocked transom. Fenestration is comprised of round-arch openings with 12/9 and 9/9 sash with stone sills. Lozenge-shaped tie rods extend along the side elevation between the first and second stories. A two-story, gable-roof ell projects from the building’s rear elevation.

Built ca.1856, the gable-roofed fire station on Pallas Street housed a school for delinquent boys in the early twentieth century. The building also served as home to the Veteran’s Club of Rhode Island and in 1980 it was used for jewelry manufacturing (Woodward 1986:208; RIHPHC data sheet).

Anecdotes

S Wallace  R Anastasi is referring to a different firehouse that was converted to a recording studio, Sound Station Seven. Sound Station Seven closed a couple of years ago (say, 2003?) and was located off Atwells near Amherst St.

R Anastasi  I first found appreciation for this building when I arrived at a party during a very cold winter (i think it was 1999). The Itchies were playing inside. It was a Christmas party for the local music scene (back when things were fun). We ate, we drank, we talked. Some slept over since there were beds. Some recorded music at the studio. It was a fun place and I am suprised no one mentioned that it was a recording studio not so long ago.

Add your Anecdotes

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