Linden Firehouse named to "Most Endangered Places List"

By Erin Wells

Special to the Sun

 

LINDEN-- A grassroots movement is underway in Cass County. In the shadow of the famed Linden Water Tower, beside a timeworn Old Firehouse, a spirit of pride has been gaining momentum.

Adding to that momentum is the selection of the Old Linden Firehouse to the 2016 Texas Most Endangered Places List.  This selection was just announced by Preservation Texas Feb. 18, at Wooldridge Square Park, a 1909 National Register of Historic Places landmark in downtown Austin.  Preservation Texas is a state level nonprofit organization that supports sites on its Most Endangered Places List providing advocacy support, publicity and assistance in fostering and building community partnerships.

Alongside the Linden Water Tower, the Old Firehouse has recently set ablaze a renewed passion among the people of Linden to protect the best elements of their historical landscape. In defiance of their own pending demise, the Firehouse and Water Tower have rekindled home-grown affinities with the town history, and those affinities have taken shape in the form of the newly established Linden Heritage Foundation -- a nonprofit organization on mission to advocate for this pair of New Deal Era landmarks and other Linden heritage causes.

The Foundation quickly gathered more than 200 charter members from a town of less than 2,000 and its extended community. In addition to local residents bent on safeguarding their own special cultural inheritance, the Foundation boasts a widespread following of patrons from as far away as Baku, Azerbaijan. 

The Old Linden Firehouse, was built in 1939 right at the foot of the 1934 Water Tower, in response to a major 1933 fire that destroyed the upstairs courtroom of the Cass County Courthouse. At the height of the Great Depression, the fire was fought with rally calls for responders formed into bucket brigades. That nearly disastrous fire, coupled with a devastating typhoid fever outbreak, caused the city to take a serious look at the need for a more plentiful and sanitary water delivery system.  

Cue the Congressional National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 which established the Public Works Administration (PWA).  The PWA soon pledged funding to assist several significant local projects -- the Linden Waterworks being the first approved PWA project in this part of Texas and the 1939 Firehouse directly beneath the tower being one of the last.

The Firehouse architect, Rudolph Stanley-Brown, was a PWA professional who had studied design at Columbia University and at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. The grandson of President James A. Garfield, Stanley-Brown’s basic, no-frills design ethic is evident in the functional concrete partial walls of the Firehouse and in the plainly utilitarian stucco facade that reflects the PWA’s emphasis on simplicity, function and durability. However, the original plans did not include the eccentric window design. 

Due to economic hardship, the 1937 minutes of the City Commission show that a call went out to local residents to furnish labor and material for the Firehouse construction, in lieu of unpaid city taxes. When the windows so gathered proved to be too tall to stack according to plan, they were nevertheless installed in the peculiar staggered arrangement that gives the building its ability to both surprise and amuse.

Due to years of inattention, the Old Firehouse has suffered substantial damage and has remained a relatively unknown gem in the town’s historical treasure box. Since assuming ownership from the City in early 2016, the Linden Heritage Foundation has successfully secured the structure from the elements and from intruders with a temporary cover and sealants at the doors and windows. 

The Foundation has also facilitated a full structural assessment of the Water Tower, funded by the generosity of Don Henley, hometown philanthropist and award winning musical artist whose recent chart topping solo album entitled Cass County brought prominence to the city and structure. This resulted in the welcome news that our historic tank is expected to stand strong for at least another 100 years.  With the help of the City of Linden, the Foundation is now pulling together some robust incentives designed to generate qualified development of both historical sites.

With the wealth of history surrounding Linden’s downtown region, the Foundation foresees the creation of a Downtown Historic District that is National Register eligible.  Indeed, after official review by the Texas Historical Commission of the documentation submitted by the Foundation research team, the Firehouse and Water Tower were both recently found eligible to the National Register of Historic Places.  Since they are worthy not only of restoration but also of the nation’s highest landmark designation, the tandem site of a preserved Water Tower and Firehouse will complement the National Register Cass County Courthouse and other contributing resources in the town as featured structures in a potential Downtown Linden Historic District. The principal jewel of the town square, the Cass County Courthouse, is Texas’ oldest courthouse, and the sole surviving antebellum county courthouse in the state – making it likewise central to local efforts to building the town’s commercial vibrancy and to help keep present high hopes for Linden’s future well fueled.