A photograph analyzed for the first time this week is giving Needham residents a fresh look at the town's first organized fire department.

Gloria Polizzotti Greis, executive director of the Needham History Center & Museum, published an analysis of the 1885 image on Wednesday, July 16, as part of her weekly stories series on needhamhistory.org. The photo shows the men of Needham Fire Company #1 standing in front of their brand-new Chestnut Street firehouse, directly across the street from the current Needham Center fire station. The driveway hadn't even been graded yet.

"A picture is worth a thousand words — but I'm only going to use 847," Greis wrote.

From buckets to firehouses

Before 1885, Needham relied on volunteers summoned by a fire bell. Residents fought blazes with buckets of water, and the main goal was rescuing people and valuables rather than saving structures, according to Greis. The town had organized a loose force of "fire engineers" in the early 1800s, but the response was haphazard.

That changed in 1885, when Needham built two firehouses simultaneously: Company #1 in Needham Center and Company #2 in the Heights. A town-wide alarm system and hydrant network followed a few years later.

The Niagara

Front and center in the photograph is the hand-pump engine "Niagara," built in 1843 by the William C. Hunneman Company of Boston for the Hingham Fire Department. Needham purchased it from Hingham in 1884 for $250. For about a year before the firehouse was finished, the engine was stored in private barns near the center of town.

The Niagara was horse-drawn, but when distances were short, firefighters grabbed the side rails and ran alongside it. Its decorated copper tank held water; the pump operated by pulling the rails up and down. The engine served Needham until about 1916, when its copper tank was sold for scrap.

Hunneman, the engine's maker, learned his craft as an apprentice at Paul Revere's foundry in Canton, according to both Greis and the Canton Historical Society. He founded his own firefighting-equipment business in 1792.

A separate Paul Revere connection hangs in the Heights to this day. The bell installed in the tower of Engine House 2 in August 1885 was made by a man who apprenticed with Paul Revere, Greis wrote. The bell-maker is not identified in surviving records and is a separate figure from Hunneman, the engine builder.

The Needham Chronicle reported that month that the new tower was "completed and is strong and stable, though not very ornamental, evidently built for use and not for show."

That bell remained in its tower until 1948, when the Heights station moved to the corner of Highland Avenue and Webster Street. It was given to the Needham History Center, where it stood on the front lawn on Glendoon Road for years. It has since been reinstalled in the glass tower of the current Heights Station, where passersby can see it.

What the photo reveals

The men in the image pose in shirtsleeves with hose wrenches in their belts, wearing scuffed boots, well-worn clothes, and hats. All display fire badges on their vests. Greis noted she cannot find a list identifying them. None appear in the official Fire Department photograph taken only a few years later, leading her to suggest they may have been among the last of the volunteer force.

Two of the men are African American. Greis wrote that there is not much documentation about Black residents in Needham in the late 1800s, but photographs like this one show that Black people were living and working in the community.

The hose cart visible behind the Niagara in the photograph still exists. It rests in the garage of the Mills House as part of the History Center's collection, along with several original nozzles and wrenches.