A Garden of Fire Hydrants

A fire hydrant without water may seem a contradiction, but there’s one in front of the Collinsville, Connecticut fire station where I served for 26 years.  It has no piping and it’s not connected to any supply source.  Rather than putting out fires, it stands as an emblem of the fire service, proudly reminding us of a critical tool used to save lives and property.  It illustrates the importance of hydrants, not just as practical instruments of firefighting technology, but as symbols of all that is good in fighting fire.

I recently discovered what can only be described as a garden of fire hydrants at the Watch Hill Fire Department in Rhode Island.  Surrounding a couple picnic tables and gathered along the outside wall of the station were well over a hundred fire hydrants in every imaginable color from shades of the more common yellows, reds, and greens, to violet, orange, pink, and gold.  There was even a hydrant painted like a Dalmatian.   Some had both large steamer valves as well as smaller spuds, others with just spuds alone.  The barrels were rounded, squared or faceted, the caps domed or a bit flattened, plain or fluted.  The spot was as colorful and beautiful as a plot of flowers.

The collection started when Bob, a firefighter at the station, purchased seven old, rusting fireplugs sold by an elderly man who had a substantial collection of antique firefighting items.  After tediously scraping and sanding the first hydrant, Bob found someone to sandblast the remainder.  The next four came from a salvage yard and were painted National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) compliant chrome yellow with specifically coded caps for use as training props.  The fire department crew became hooked on hydrants, and the collection grew rapidly.  Some were acquired on EBay, others on Craigslist.  They obtained several from newspaper ads, salvage yards, scrap metal dealers, town water departments, and summer residents who unloaded them out of their car trunks as donations.  Many are painted to match colors from their town of origin, but others are in various shades at the request of firefighters.

The display certainly attracts attention and has proved a valuable education tool.  Thousands of people like me have stopped over the years giving department members an opportunity to talk fire safety.  As of this spring, the department had 186 hydrants, fifty-two of which were inside the station.  Their goal is 200.  Of course, their previous goal had been 100.

Many firefighters speak of hydrants with affection.  Heavy, awkward to transport, and made of cold cast iron, the love of hydrants can be hard to understand.   Other symbols of firefighting seem more logically endearing such as tools like pick-head axes and pike poles which firefighters grasp with their hands, or the helmets they wear on their heads.  Although practical employment of Dalmatians ended with horse drawn fire trucks, their continued connection to firefighters has endured because they are soft, warm, and loyal, attributes lacking in hydrants.

In a profession where the job is to “put the wet stuff on the red stuff” and quench the flames, hydrants seem to possess a talismanic power, even though they are only present in thickly settled areas served by public water.  When their useful life is over, they have increasingly avoided the scrap heap and become  collectors’ items and art objects reminding us not just of fire safety, but the brave and honorable service of firefighters.

As hydrants grow to become metaphors and totems of firefighting, their transformation into art will only increase.  Milford, Connecticut has had a program of allowing citizens to paint working hydrants with a wide variety of designs from floral motifs to pirates (See, http://davidkleff.typepad.com/home/2015/07/fire-hydrants-as-art.html ).  In other communities, I’ve seen hydrants painted as colonial soldiers, dogs, and other creatures.

Opposite the firehouse on U.S. Route 7 in Shelburne, Vermont, artist Chris Sharp has welded together several hydrants in the form of a giant toy jack.  His transformation of the fireplugs is eye catching and many people stop to take photos.  Created “in response to the heroic effort of firefighter/first responders after 9-11,” he calls his several hydrant sculptures “candy for your eye” that give “you a good feeling about the supporting infrastructure of our society.”  It’s a statement that art isn’t only in museums.  Although inspired by “the courage and selflessness” of emergency response personnel, the sculpture is “also about the playful representation of an overlooked and under appreciated everyday object,” he wrote to me.  “People LOVE the fire hydrant sculptures and making something that brings joy to so many people feels right.”

Beyond reclaiming retired hydrants, original art in the fireplug form is also becoming more common.  A good example stands outside the Morris Cove firehouse near New Haven, Connecticut.  It’s a large stylized hydrant on polished steel wheels with ersatz arms holding a ladder and a tool.  It’s a serious emblem of firefighting, but joyously rendered, it made me smile.

Practical objects like hydrants often become symbols for something larger than themselves and thus do double duty in our world.  The fire service is a time honored profession that takes both its history and ongoing responsibility seriously.  Hydrants as art are powerful evidence of such dedication.