1077 - Central Fire Station

By the late 1920s, Lawton’s central business district had ballooned, spreading out over almost twelve blocks on the northeast side of town. While the expansion and growth were encouraging to the city, it would soon be faced with a need, and one that was made devastatingly obvious when the First Christian Church was decimated by fire in 1930. In the hopes of preventing more destructive fires, a new, modern fire station was needed.

Local architect and Lawton pioneer Guy Dale was tasked with designing the building. Built in 1931, the two-story building was constructed with red, gold, and bronze colored brick and embellished with cast stone medallions and edging. Four bays provided space for evolving equipment. Initially fire wagons were dragged by horses, and later ladder trucks. Those ladder trucks were so tall that they required precise skill to maneuver through the bay doors.

In 1948, the station not only battled blazes, but fought the polio epidemic as well. For two months, the station held a portable iron lung used for the emergency treatment of polio that was available to the public.

It remained a functional fire station for decades, keeping pace with progress and added personnel. Even as the Lawton Fire Department grew to include eight fire stations, Central continued to be the home to the firefighters of Station No. 1. In 2021, ninety years after it was built, firefighters from Lawton Fire Station No. 1 moved into the new station in the Public Safety Complex. But this wasn’t the end of the story for Central Fire Station. The building has been listed on both the Oklahoma Registry of Historic Places and the National Register of Historic Places, and is currently the only fire station in the state of Oklahoma to hold that distinction.