Hanover (Pa.) Fire Department Museum Set to Open Soon

Hanover, Pa.–The heavy, silver-painted bell once sat atop the Friendship Fire Co. of Pennville. Its ringing would call volunteers from their homes and businesses, many dashing out the door, instinctively drawn to put their lives on the line to protect the town.

Today, that bell is part of the growing collection of artifacts and memorabilia that officials hope will call visitors to the new Hanover Fire Department Museum.

From a hand-powered pumper that was around for the dedication of the Washington Monument in 1885 and purchased second-hand by Hanover’s Fire Company No. 1 to the huge alarm box alert system used in 1911 at the Chestnut Street station, the museum is drawing together the scattered remnants of the area’s firefighting history, piecing together stories that span generations.

“We’ve been finding so much stuff,” said former Hanover Borough Fire Commissioner James Roth, who has spearheaded efforts to establish the museum over the past few years. “Every day people bring things in.”

Volunteers are still completing the displays and organizing the hundreds of items that seem to grow daily.

“We keep acquiring stuff,” said former fireman and museum curator Wayne Bollinger, standing amidst the artifacts, oddities and memorabilia that date back to the late 1700s.

The Hanover Fire Department had maintained a small museum of historic firefighting equipment at its Wirt Park station. The new museum, just a stone’s throw away from that station, is nicely filling out the former steam-and-electric power plant building of the Hanover Shoe Co. complex. The brick building offers much more space – about 4,000 square feet – for the growing collection.

“We had more stuff to display that was never displayed,” Roth explained. “We enlarged ourselves into here. This gives us at least four times the square feet we had in the other museum.”

It has provided enough space to create an archive area, a meeting room, a children’s discovery section and a Pennsylvania room, along with the expansive displays.

Volunteers have spent the past year sorting through old radios, breathing devices, fire extinguishers, battle-scarred helmets and other firefighting artifacts for display at the museum, which is set to open in May.

Part of the goal, Roth said, is to bring the area’s firefighting heritage together, much like the various Hanover and Penn Township companies that have gradually joined together over the years.

After walking in the narrow entrance, into the open, high-ceiling brick building, you can’t help but notice the giant, glass display cabinets that highlight the three early Hanover companies and three original Penn Township companies.

“This ties all the Hanover and Penn Township fire companies together,” Roth said of the cabinets, which were salvaged from the Pennville station.

“There’s one for each fire company,” Bollinger said.

But there is much more to see, and one display leads to the next. There are the old clocks, and a typewriter with an antique desk and chair designed to show an early watch room. There is the display dedicated to the TV show “Emergency” that is on loan from a private collector, the very uncomfortable-looking metal stretcher and a weather vane and lighting rod from the Hanover Street station.

Then there is the huge 1911 Gamewell Street Fire Alarm Box console, with its cranks, ticker-tape and bells that once was the hub of the Chestnut Street station. For many years, it was used to monitor alarm boxes all over town. The borough still uses a similar Gamewell system, Roth said, only on a smaller scale.

“We saved the stuff that everybody else threw away,” said Bollinger, who has been with the Hanover department for 35 years. “We’re trying to get everything vintage.”

Roth and Bollinger hope the exhibits will give visitors a feel for what it was like to be a firefighter back in the day when they had to lower hitches from hooks near the ceiling onto the waiting horses so they could pull the pumper cart through town.

There are plans to install a loft to show the bedding quarters for firefighters, and a spiral staircase like the ones built to keep the horses from walking up to the second floor. And there are plans to somehow squeeze in a 1935 Dodge fire truck that’s now at Penn Township’s Clover Lane station.

The museum not only will chronicle the evolution of firefighting in Hanover and Penn Township but will serve as a home for the community’s rich history.

There is a portion set aside to house artifacts from Guthrie Memorial Library’s Pennsylvania Room and a fireplace mantle and other items from the old Forney Farm.

The building itself was part of Hanover Shoe’s expansive factory between Carlisle and Franklin streets, serving as a coal-burning boiler facility that generated power for the business. Later, it served as a temporary home for the library during renovations to the Carlisle Street building.

There are some items that are strictly unique to Hanover’s history, Roth said, like the registration journal from the Chestnut Street station that has the signatures of some of the town’s most prominent residents who came for an open house there in 1896.

“There’s definitely treasures in here that are priceless,” Roth said.

As the project inches closer to reality, museum officials are looking to the private sector for support, to bring the structure up to standards and finish preparing the displays.

The museum committee has sent out letters to businesses and community leaders seeking support.

“The money we raise is going to the display part of it,” said Roth, noting that the borough is paying for the building’s utilities and upkeep.

The museum will also try to support itself somewhat with memberships and a small admission fee. Roth said the hours of operation haven’t been determined yet.

As the museum quickly becomes the repository for everything firefighting, Bollinger said he expects even more items to turn up.

“Hopefully we’ll get more stuff,” he said. “We’re still trying to gather artifacts.”


TO DONATE
Donations to the Hanover Fire Department Museum can be sent to the Hanover Borough Office, Museum Fund Drive, 44 Frederick St., Hanover, PA 17331.
The Hanover Fire Department Museum will feature a Pennsylvania Room, which includes a wooden fireplace and mantle donated by Guthrie Memorial Library to the museum.