The oldest fire station in Lexington will be 100 on Sept. 19, and yes, there will be a celebration that Sunday.
It's Station No. 4 on the east side of Jefferson Street between Second and Third streets. The neo-Jacobean-style building cost $9,763 to build and is named the Vogt Reel House. It looks so much like a giant toy model of an old-fashioned firehouse that you can easily imagine a clanging bell and two white horses pulling a steam-powered pumper out at a run as smoke and flames burst from the window of a Victorian-style house in the background. But by the mid-1920s, the horses were gone.
"They had a banquet for about 16 in 1904 to dedicate the station," fire department Maj. Clayton Richards said. "We're having a lot more people: an open house for the public from 5 to 9 p.m. and hot dogs and hamburgers, a band, stuff for the kids to do and old photos on display. But at 8 p.m. on the dot, just like in 1904, the mayor's going to rededicate the building."
The 1904 banquet must have been a dandy. Henry Vogt, then a Lexington councilman for 16 years, donated the land for the building.
In private life, he dealt in fancy groceries and elegant delicacies at a Short Street and Broadway location. The banquet invitation for was printed in gold letters on crimson paper.
"Mr. Vogt donated the land for the station, and so it was named after him," Richards said "The story goes, but I've never seen this in writing, that if ever the station should be torn down and no longer used for a fire station, the land would revert to the Vogt heirs."
The station originally housed horses in stalls, five firemen and occasional neighborhood visitors, and it had a hay loft and a pot-bellied stove. And later, Dalmatians. One named Duchess was killed when hit by a train; another, Spark, died when a car struck it. The station was built to help fight a growing number of blazes in the west end of town. Today, there are 10 firefighters on rotating duty there, and the station makes more than 2,000 emergency runs a year.
Jefferson was once a busy artery for traffic headed toward U.S. 25 and Cincinnati.
In the 1890s, a man named Wickliffe Preston raised horses nearby, and there was Preston Pond at Second and Jefferson, with cows grazing close by and children driving past in pony carts.
And yes, like many century-old buildings, Vogt Reel House has a ghost. The logo on the side of a Station 4 truck reads: "The Phantom." And there's a picture of a skeleton's head in a fire helmet.
The stories of strange happenings at the station date back almost 60 years. Capt. Jason Wells points out ancient, tiny rocking chairs; four-brick-thick walls and a narrow, red, iron spiral staircase that was originally in the second Fayette County courthouse, which was destroyed by fire. You can clearly hear each step when a person climbs it, with a distinctive, loose-sounding "blap" at the top of the stairs.
Then there is a hardwood floor that looks almost old enough to be 1904 vintage.
On Christmas Day 1945, fireman Henry McDonald, 68, died of a heart attack in the station. Obviously, people didn't retire as soon in those days. McDonald had already retired from military service before becoming a fireman for 28 years.
Some think "Old Man McDonald," as the firefighters call him, still looks after the place.
"Do you want to hear a real ghost story?" asked Richards, who was stationed there for nine years in the 1980s.
One night, he said, with three on duty, he was responsible for locking all the doors and windows. Late that night, all three heard footsteps slowly ascending the spiral staircase and landing with a "blap" at the top. Then, nothing but silence. Richards quickly turned on the lights and searched the building.
"Nobody was there," he said. "But that's why I believe in the phantom."
The place still has the feel of a neighborhood fire station, something that Wells encourages. "If I got transferred, I'd come back here in a heartbeat," Richards said.
From the stairs at the back of the building, a visitor can see the towers of the old Victorian houses on Third Street. And when the leaves have fallen, the modern downtown towers are in view.
It's obvious that the old Vogt Reel house is more than a 100-year-old antique. It's a civic treasure.
