In downtown Kitchener, cranes and scaffolding hardly warrant a second glance as buildings soar into the clouds.
It was much different 150-plus years ago in downtown Berlin. Council ordered a modern fire hall to replace the semi-derelict spritzenhaus that had previously housed equipment the volunteer firefighters used.
The new Frederick Street fire hall featured a 75-foot tower that soon became a landmark. For a few months in 1874, it was a popular sidewalk-superintendent site as scaffolding went higher and higher.
The fire hall tower had several purposes: hoses could now be hung, dried and rolled properly; a lookout could spot exactly where fires were located; and a bell atop the tower could summon the volunteer firemen. (Telephones were just being invented at this time.)
But, where is the bell in the circa 1875 photo?
Two years later, it arrived from Troy in New York state. With the name Victoria inscribed on her, the $700 bell was soon ringing out to summon firefighters and to proclaim the 9 p.m. young people’s curfew.
During the ensuing 1880s, two things occurred: the bell developed a small crack and the wooden tower developed large cracks. The bell was lowered, returned to the manufacturer, repaired and remounted in 1892. Meanwhile, the wooden tower had been demolished just above the three round windows and a sturdier brick tower erected.
The front of the fire hall itself was smartened up with redesigned doors, a new window and a large sign. Victoria did her job faithfully from 1892 until 1924 when once again she was removed from the tower even though the Frederick Street fire hall remained in operation until 1960.
Kitchener’s new city hall was being built in 1923-24 with a soaring, pillared tower.
Since the 1870s, society and technology had bypassed the fire hall bell’s functions. No longer was there a curfew. More importantly, the city’s firefighters were now professionals, not volunteers. There was always one shift of men on duty at the fire hall and, when a fire occurred, the others were summoned by telephone. Thus, the fire hall bell had little purpose while the new city hall had an empty bell tower.
Once again, Victoria descended, crossed Frederick Street and was hoisted atop the new city hall. There, the bell enjoyed four decades-plus ringing out the major hours and entertaining on special occasions. Victoria’s pealing strength was so great that by the late 1960s, cracks began developing in the city hall structure and her ringing was cut back severely.
When city hall was torn down in 1974, Victoria once again came to earth … and her new home? The Kitchener fire department headquarters’ now on Highland Road West. There she sat, silent, for two decades until the city hall clock tower itself was reconstructed in Victoria Park in 1995.
The fire department people were not much pleased to see their bell once again taken from them and installed in the park. However, a similar-sized bell from the old post office at King and Benton was found and today sits at the current Strasburg Road fire headquarters.
Nowadays, the appropriately named Victoria bell remains in Victoria Park. Alas, she no longer rings: her power is so great that nearby homes almost shifted on their foundations when tested in the mid-1990s.
The bell is perhaps the final vestige of the 1874 fire hall. That building was demolished right after the Highland Road headquarters opened in August 1960. Its long-ago site was replaced by a parking lot and the tall structure that served for two decades as Kitchener’s city hall. That building, 22 Frederick, has recently been converted into student accommodation by Conestoga College.