Reflecting reality: the history of fire fighting through toys

Magazine Antiques, Dec, 1995 by Barbara Hayward

The clamor of horse-drawn fire-fighting vehicles dashing to a fire was also evoked on jigsaw puzzles, which began to be produced along with board games, building blocks, and other wooden toys in the late nineteenth century. The museum owns two complete jigsaw puzzles with fire-fighting themes, the one in Plate IX is lithographed with a scene of the Brooklyn Fire Department Engine Company Number One's steam pumper arriving at a fire. Another excellent example of a lithographed fire-fighting toy is the steam pumper shown in Plate VIII, which is made of wood with the lithographed design glued on. It was made by the R. Bliss Manufacturing Company of Pawtucket, Rhode Island, primarily a manufacturer of doll's houses that also made toy firehouses and fire engines. This toy was part of a set that also included a hose-reel cart and a hook and ladder.

The twentieth century brought motorized fire-fighting vehicles, although during the transitional years it was common to see both horse-drawn and motorized equipment at the same fire, real or pretend. (The last horse-drawn response to a fire in New York City was a ceremonial run on December 20, 1992.) Toy manufacturers such as Hubley and Kenton produced cast-iron versions of motorized vehicles in the 1920s and 1930s. Hubley's cast-iron motorized steam pumper (Pl. V) featured a nickel-plated air chamber and boiler and rubber tires. The motorized steam pumper in Plate III appeared in the line of "Kenton-toys" featured in a Kenton Hardware Company catalogue issued about 1920. Most of these cast-iron toys had moving parts and freestanding fire-fighter figures, although those made by the A. L. Williams Company of Ravenna, Ohio, had no movable parts.

Several toy manufacturers in and near Dayton, Ohio, made toys operated by a heavy cast-metal flywheel, which, when wound, allowed the vehicle to climb a fairly steep incline. The museum's collection of these "hillclimber" toys includes those shown in Plate IV, all possibly made by the Schieble Toy and Novelty company. The tractor, on the right, at one time may have pulled an aerial ladder or a water tower.

Germany was the center of European toy production in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.(9) Gebruder Bing, one of a number of family toy-making enterprises in Nuremberg, made the pressed-tin firehouse in Plate XV, along with the wind-up truck and engine intended to be housed in it. The set was made for export, since the words on the firehouse doors are in English. The tin wind-up aerial ladder truck in Plate XIX is also from Nuremberg, probably made by George Fischer, who began producing toys in 1903. It may have been a "penny toy" - small toys produced primarily between the 1890s and mid-1930s that sold for one cent each.(10)

A fun toy for any child in the 1920s would have been the ride-on fire truck made by the Keystone Manufacturing Company of Boston (Pl. VI). Loosely based on real fire trucks of the period, this sturdy, pressed-steel toy is steered by the wooden handle, which extends through the cab to the front axle. The truck is missing its original hose and ladders, but the siren and the bell still work.