New life for city’s oldest firehouse

Dudley Square building undergoes $2.5m renovation

October 03, 2011|By Eric Moskowitz, Globe Staff

Kathy Kottaridis, Historic Boston executive director, showed old photos… (John Tlumacki/Globe Staff )

Abandoned for half a century, Boston’s oldest firehouse spent decades sliding into decay: boarded-up, overgrown, and listing in the direction of Dudley Square’s Eliot Burying Ground.

Fans of history protected it from the wrecking ball in 1969 and propped it up in 1993 to prevent collapse, but the hollowed-out Eustis Street station remained too daunting for public or private rescue.

That changed with a series of new tax credits and a partnership between the city and the nonprofit Historic Boston Inc., yielding a two-year, $2.5 million rehabilitation that will be officially celebrated with a ribbon-cutting Wednesday.

Quietly open since midsummer, the building turned heads this past weekend as a temporary art gallery stop on the Roxbury Open Studios tour. For weeks it has been causing double takes among passersby accustomed to the graffiti, razor wire, and plywood that long marred the property.

“People pause and say, ‘What is that? What’s going on here?’ ’’ said Kathy Kottaridis, executive director of Historic Boston, whose office now occupies the top floor of the Italianate firehouse; granite arches frame her windows, and elaborate scrollwork supports the building’s eaves.

Now, she said, “it pops.’’

The occupancy by Historic Boston marks a departure for the organization, which formed in 1960 to save the Old Corner Bookstore, a 1718 building that had been slated to be razed for a downtown garage.

The nonprofit had kept its offices above Old Corner, now a Freedom Trail landmark, as its mission expanded to saving other properties across Boston by lending money and expertise to private owners or by redeveloping them itself. The move to Dudley represents a vote of confidence in the firehouse and the surrounding neighborhood.

State Representative Byron Rushing said in an e-mail that Roxbury residents will welcome the resurrection of “this small but significant building.’’

“One of Roxbury’s untapped resources,’’ he wrote, “ is its variety of 19th century architectural styles still standing.’’

Starting next month, Historic Boston also plans to unlock the adjacent Eliot Burying Ground for weekday public access. Until now, it has been the only one of the city’s trio of 1630s burial grounds not regularly open. The cemetery is the final resting place for multiple Colonial governors and for John Eliot, 17th-century minister to the Indians.

The firehouse has a colorful history that predates Roxbury’s 1868 merger with Boston. It was designed by John R. Hall, a noted architect who oversaw the 1859 restoration of the State House dome and cupola and who also designed Dudley Square’s Dartmouth Hotel - itself redeveloped a few years ago as residences, artist lofts, and commercial space.