Last of the Fire Horses

With a trail of smoke and a wailing whistle, the last horse-drawn fire engine in New York makes it final run, dashing along Fulton Street and then down Court Street to Joralemon Street before arriving at the rear of Brooklyn’s Borough Hall. It was a ceremonial final call for the horses as city dignitaries, fire officials and passers-by watched the end of an era on the morning of December 20, 1922. The horses were being retired and replaced by motorized fire trucks.

The days of the fire horse were numbered for more than a decade. “Once more, the picturesque is to yield to the utilitarian,” The Times wrote on February 19, 1911. “That thrilling sight – three plunging horses drawing engine or hook and ladder – one of the few thrilling sights to be seen in our prosaic streets, is soon to become a thing of the past. Within the next five or six years, there will not be a fire horse in Greater New York. The gasoline motor will do the work of these old favorites.” The Times headline said it all: “Motorizing the Fire Department – The Horse Must Go.”

There were about 1,550 fire horses in service in New York’s fire department in 1911, but the day after a motorized apparatus was tested The Times declared it was “the death knell of the fire department horse.”

It was always a difficult task for three big horses to pull a water tower to a fire — their best speed in a mile was five minutes. A gasoline-propelled water tower could go much faster and it could be backed into narrow streets, something horses couldn’t do.

In 1913, the fire department announced that it would not purchase any more horses. The horses still in service were kept on until they were ready to retire.

In this photo, the gallant horses on Engine Company No. 205 of Brooklyn Heights are Balgriffen, Danny Beg and Penrose. Driver George W. Murray holds the reins and Captain Leon Howard, in the rear, keeps his hand on the whistle rope to give one long blast as the horse-drawn engine rides into history.