| Arcadia’s Fire Station #105 is a 21,000-square-foot facility that houses the engine company’s command center, the Fire Department’s administrative headquarters, and living quarters for a shift of 13 firefighters. Its construction cost was $7 million.
The linear site has large commercial neighbors and small residential ones, fronting on Arcadia’s north/south artery, Santa Anita Boulevard, across from a public golf course. In shaping the limited internal open space of the constrained site, multi-purpose allowance had to be made for fire apparatus movement, outdoor maintenance, parking, and outdoor social/recreational courtyard space.
Similarly, at the perimeter, the narrowness of the site precluded significant setbacks, hence the building ‘borrows’ landscape from its context, and relies on the character of the street-facing elevation for the richness, light, and shade that landscape otherwise provides. This Santa Anita frontage counterpoints cadence and white space in pursuit of a civic stateliness. Principal materials are smooth-finish cement plaster, limestone cladding, copper clad canopies and lookouts - quiet references to the ladder baskets of fire engines.
Floors and the engine room are spatially interpenetrated to maximize camaraderie, in addition to an indoor-outdoor flow between the kitchen and dining room, and the barbecue deck.
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