Firehouse, Engine Company 31

You are standing before what looks more like a French castle than a fire station. Built in eighteen ninety-five, this structure was designed by architects Napoleon Le Brun and Sons to resemble a sixteenth-century chateau from the Loire Valley. They decorated the limestone and brick facade with intricate carvings of dolphins, wreaths, and shells, creating a level of elegance that was entirely unheard of for a municipal utility building at the time. Critics once mocked it as a manifestly extravagant absurdity, arguing that beauty had no place in the grim work of fighting fires.