The sliding pole, one of the signature features of U.S. fire stations, has its origins in Chicago around the turn of the 19th century.
By the end of 1872, African-American firefighters had joined the Chicago Fire Department, Dekalb Walcott, a retired battalion chief who's now a historian at the Chicago African American Firefighters Museum, told WBBM-TV. And it was the firefighters of Engine Company 21, the city's first African-American engine company, who went on to help create the firehouse pole.
"The members of this company practiced drilling, sliding the pole, making fast runouts," said Walcott, who wrote "Black Heroes of Fire: The First African American Fire Company in Chicago—Fire Engine Company 21." "Those fast runouts made them nationally known. Why? Because they beat everybody else into their fires."
Those quick response times eventually led the fire department to install sliding poles in all of the city's fire stations by 1878. The first poles were made from wood, but the occurrence of splinters stopped that practice, and the first brass fire pole was patented in Boston in 1880, according to WBBM.
