Historian Works to Save Fire Station

Add Feedback

Share |

Riverside, California

The City of Riverside is filled with historic landmarks, one being the famous Mission Inn. One of these landmarks, the Central Fire Station, was being threatened, and an architectural historian, Tanya Sorrell, came to its defense. The City of Riverside had plans to tear it down and build an office complex or a parking lot. Sorrell pleaded for the 1950s era building to be saved, and took her case to the State Capitol.

"This particular style, this is the international style, and fire stations in general. I started to see a real connection there. You have all these uses in a fire station...and the international style, as it was conceived in Germany and came over here in the post war, is all about form following function," Sorrell explains. The international style incorporates different blocks of space. How they relate to each other and intersect dictates the shape of the building.

Sorrell wrote a proposal and flew to California's Capitol to plead with the State Commissioners to place the Central Fire Station on the Register of Historic Resources, and was successful.  Now the station is a historic landmark and a special process must be gone through with the California Environmental Quality Act before it can be torn down.
Author:Bill Lorin - FDNNTV.com