page_title: Briarcliff Manor Fire Department
section_title: Early 1900s
hierarchical_section_title: Briarcliff Manor Fire Department / History / Early 1900s
caption_attribution_description: English: The BMFD's first horse-drawn vehicle, purchased 1902, seen in 1905.
context_page_description: The Briarcliff Manor Fire Department provides fire protection and emergency medical services to the village of Briarcliff Manor, New York and its hamlet Scarborough. The volunteer fire department also serves unincorporated areas of Ossining and Mount Pleasant. The fire department has three fire companies, two stations, and four fire engines. Its engines include three pumpers and a tower-ladder; the department also maintains other vehicles, including a heavy rescue vehicle. The Briarcliff Manor Fire Department Ambulance Corps provides emergency medical transport with two ambulances. The fire department is headquartered at the Briarcliff Manor Village Hall, with its other station in Scarborough, on Scarborough Road.
  The Briarcliff Steamer Company No. 1 was founded in 1902 by Frederick C. Messinger. He became the first chief of the department, founded February 10, 1903. In 1906, the Briarcliff Fire Company was established. The village's municipal building and first permanent firehouse was built in 1914 in downtown Briarcliff Manor. Seven years later, in 1921, the Scarborough Fire Company was established.
context_section_description: Briarcliff Manor's fire company existed for more than a year before Briarcliff Manor's incorporation. Frederick C. Messinger (a fireman in Kingston for ten years) and thirteen local men founded the private fire company in 1901. Thirty-six men became the company's charter members on March 4, 1902, and dues were set at 25 cents per month. On April 15 of that year, the company took the name Briarcliff Steamer Company No. 1. The company's first equipment was a 1901 hand-drawn chemical apparatus, with a tank containing a mixture of water and sodium bicarbonate. Sulfuric acid would be added to the tank, creating carbon dioxide, which would propel the solution through the hose and help extinguish the fire. That first apparatus was white, which Messinger thought more visible than the conventional red in a village without street lights, and the village's engines remain white.
  The chemical apparatus was only suitable for small fires, and was supplemented in 1902 with a steam-operated pumper and a hose wagon, both horse-drawn. The two pieces of equipment were purchased by Walter Law's Briarcliff Realty Company and were loaned to the fire company without charge. At the time, the fire company housed its equipment and horses at the Briarcliff Farms' Barn A (present-day St. Theresa's School) and used the Wheelwright shop as a meeting room and for social events.
  After the village was incorporated, the company petitioned the village board to form the company into a village fire department. Their request was granted on February 10, 1903. In 1906, the village counsel advised reorganization, and the Briarcliff Fire Company was created in the office of Walter Law, with Messinger again serving as Foreman. The fire equipment, totaling $55.93 ($1,600 in 2019), was transferred to the new company. In 1908, American LaFrance sold a hook-and-ladder truck and two-wheeled hose-and-chemical truck (both horse-drawn) to the fire department for $2,700 ($76,800 in 2019). In the following year an alarm bell was purchased, replacing first a suspended railway iron and sledgehammer in a barn, which was followed by an ineffective steam whistle.
  In the first decade of the 1900s, the Archville Fire Company was formed in neighboring Archville, New York, with the company headquarters in a shed on the corner of Albany Post Road (current U.S. Route 9) and Union Street. The company's original equipment consisted of thirty 3½ gallon galvanized buckets, and later a 50-gallon horse-drawn pumper purchased from the Valhalla Fire Department. The company was chartered in 1909 as the Archville Fire Department, with Hubert W. Mannerly as the first fire chief. From then until 1930 the Archville department was autonomous, until Briarcliff Manor requested that Archville provide its fire protection services to Scarborough. In 1930, the Archville department changed its name to the Scarborough Fire Company and became part of the Briarcliff Manor Fire Department, although no contract had been signed and neither party expressed intentions to formalize the arrangement. In 1972, the company was split into two units, with an autonomous Archville unit and the Scarborough Engine Company, headquartered in the Scarborough Presbyterian Church garage and a part of the Briarcliff Manor Fire Department.
  After a large fire at Miss Knox's School (site of the Briarcliff Corporate Campus) in 1912, the department's equipment was upgraded to deal with larger fires. The village purchased its first motorized vehicle, an American LaFrance pumper truck. The existing hose-and-chemical wagon was motorized and became the chief's car. In 1914, the Briarcliff Manor Municipal Building was constructed to house the government and fire engines. The likeness of its garage doors can be seen in the façade of the present restaurant. Later in 1914 the department established sub-stations at Mrs. Whitson's barn on Pleasantville Road and on the Holden farm at Scarborough Road (roughly opposite the current firehouse); these were discontinued in 1921. The first major fire to involve the motorized vehicles was in 1916 at th
caption: The department's first fire engine, 1905
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