The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1833-1916, 1897-12-20
The Fire Districts.

The term Of service of the present Fire
Commissioners will terminate on the 31st
of December, but they nave anticipated the
establishment Of the Greater New York
Fire Department by a new subdivision Of
the fire districts in this town. Exclusive
of the two fire districts in the territory
which is to make up the borough of the
Bronx, there are now nine fire districts in
the city. They vary in size from 145 acres,
the smallest, otherwise known as "the dry
goods district. between Chambers and
Houston streets, West Broadway and Elm
street, to the largest, 2,416 acres, the
Manhattanville and Fort George district,
north Of One Hundred and Tenth street
and west of Eighth avenue.
The present subdivisions have not been
made with reference to area or population,
but rather to other conditions. The First
is the downtown or business district, south
of Chambers street; the Second, the ship
ping and warehouse district on the west
side of town, north of Chambers and south
of Houston street; the Third is the dry goods
district; the Fourth is the populous east
district, north of Chambers and south
of Houston; districts Five and Six are be-
tween Houston and Fifty-ninth streets,
with Twenty-third street as the boun-
dalJ line the Seventh is the district
west of the Central Park, and the Eighth
the district east of the Park, north of
Fifty.ninth, and south of One Hundred
and Tenth street, and the Ninth and Tenth
districts are north of One Hundred and
Tenth street, Eighth avenue being the
dividing line. Under the new division Of
fire districts, however, the number has
been reduced to three, the boundary lines
Of which seem to have more reference to
territorial than to fire lines. The First
district includes the whole territory south
of Thirteenth street; the Second extends
from Thirteenth to Forty-third street the
Third is to be north of Forty.third.
Precisely why these ines of division at
Thirteenth and Forty.third streets have
been established is not very clear, for they
are not ward lines, such as regulate real
estate descriptions and valuations made by
the city. They are not sectional lines, such
as have superseded the ward lines in official
descriptions. They do not conform to any
lines of political division, and they do not
correspond with the former fire lines, as
heretofore established. Nor can they be
Salu 10 CONFORM WIFI UDc requirements
of the fire service, for there were last year
more than twice as many fires in what
is to be known hereafter as District / as
there were in the district to be numbered
2; and in the downtown business neighbor-
hoods Of the city, mostly included within
District /, the losses from fire, of course,
are much larger than those in the districts
of the city occupied by dwelling houses.
For instance, in the Harlem district, here
| tofore the Tenth, 800 fires last year entailed
u total loss of $9s, 600, whereas in the First,
or business, district, only 202 fires caused q
loss of $4,000.
1t is to be presumed, however, that the
Fire Commission must have made the
change for some reason they are prepared to
defend. 1t is the first of a series of radical,
sweeping, and multifarious changes which
are likely to occur in all municipal depart
ments during the closing days of this month
of December, in expectation of the estab-
lishment of the new order of things which
is to come in with the new year. On and
after Jan. 1 there will be a "single-headed"
Fire Department.