Bridgton's 'Hose Tower'

The Fascinating Specificity
of Turn-of-the-Century Hose Towers

by Mike Davis

     Have you ever wondered what that strange tower affixed to the backside of the museum was for?  What it is, why it’s there?  Some of you may know already, but I know when I first came here several years ago I didn’t have a clue.  If you don’t know, an important clue is that our museum here is quartered in the old Bridgton Fire Department building.  This is important because our mystery tower is neither bell-tower not clock-tower nor even observation tower.  It is a highly specified piece of technology from another time, a tool as much as a fire engine or fire axe.  It is a hose tower, and was built for the sole purpose of drying used fire hoses over a hundred years ago, and in that time it’s accumulated many stories to tell.  I would be glad to share a portion of its history with you today.

But first, we must start at the beginning. 

The original fire hoses date back to the late 1670s, when they were made from 50 foot strips of leather, sewn together and riveted down the sides with hundreds of brass rivets.  They could only hold pressures of 100-150 PSI at the upper range, and had to be oiled very frequently to keep them from drying out and splitting.  Blow outs were common as the steam engines of the mid 1700’s grew in power and carrying capacity.

Author Mike Davis standing inside Bridgton's hose tower.

However, despite their failings leather hoses were to be the type of hose used for the next 200 years, until mass produced linen fabric arrived in the early 1860s.  With this new innovation, unlined fire hoses made of circular woven linen slowly began to replace traditional leather hoses.   The new woven hoses were lighter than their heavy leather counterparts, and within a decade their performance quickly rose to equal those of leather’s in strength and performance.  This is because woven linen hose can be sewn together, rather than riveted, and as the flax hose fibers become wet, they swell up and tighten the weave, causing the hose to become watertight.

Because of this self-tightening feature, by the 1880s woven hose was regularly being advertised as capable of being tested to 350 PSI.  This increased power was much needed for the firemen of the late 1800s, as city buildings had by then grown up much taller than leather hoses could project water.  It was common in the mid-1800s for tall buildings that caught fire to burn down to all but the first or perhaps second story, on account of the early leather fire hoses simply being unable to reach any flames above that height. To the blooming inner cities, woven hose was a quite often a literal lifesaver.

However, the new woven hoses did have one major drawback; they were not as durable as leather hoses.  While leather hoses did require regular maintenance, they could last for years if treated properly.  Woven hoses had a much shorter lifespan on account of their material.  Woven hoses, whether from flax in the early years or later cotton fibers, do not respond well to being wet for long periods of time.  They may form a watertight hose under pressure, but when the pressure drops the fibers suck up water and become waterlogged.  Since these fibers are organic, if left to sit wet they soon begin to break down. 

Traditional leather hoses were wound on vast hose reels; the remains of one particularly large one we have on display at the base of the tower.  Usually made from wood or wrought iron they allowed the heavy leather hoses to be coiled up like thread on a bobbin, and unreeled when needed.  However, firemen quickly found that these hose reels were not sufficient for the new woven hoses, as cotton hoses rolled up wet on hose reels would soon develop mildew and rot. The leading problem in this method of storage was poor air circulation, as well as a tendency for the fabric to hold the water it had absorbed for long periods of time.

To solve this issue, the engineers of the day turned to architects to design a way to best dry out such hoses.  Looking at how the navy had been drying waterlogged flaxen rope for centuries by hanging it from the yardarms of masts, fire stations quickly adopted the idea of doing so with their hoses as well.  But where to hang dripping, heavy firehoses often a hundred or more feet in length where air could get at them and the water could drip drain its way out?

Well, some communities experimented with suspending the hoses from tall trees, or in cities from the brick and steel water towers that provided water pressure to the pipeworks, and one small town in New Jersey even made regional news by its decision to suspend its firehoses from the outside of the town’s church steeple, but it quickly became apparent that a new structure, ideally one connected to the fire station, was necessary to suit this task.  And so the hose tower was born.

Built in the main from the 1890s to the 1920s, hose towers were an essential part of any major fire-fighting operation, to the extent that most towns large enough to have a fire engine had one.  They dotted the landscape of the eastern seaboard and Midwest, serving as hose drying towers, fire lookout towers, and bell towers combined.  After fighting a fire, firefighters would hoist their hoses on ropes up inside the tower to dry. Snow, ice, and water would accumulated on the hoses during their use as well, and the tower was used to drip-dry the material.  These towers were essential for drying the hoses used by all fire departments during that time.

The fire tower of Bridgton was constructed in 1902, and is very typical in appearance to a turn of the century hose tower.  Tall, unadorned, utilitarian in both purpose and design.  It has two windows on the top, facing north and south for ventilation, as well as a great sliding door at the base.  A series of counterweights, some of which were found in the restoration of the tower and are now on display, aids in the movement of the great wooden slab door.  The inner ceiling is set with 25 block and tackle hoists for raising and lowering hoses inside the tower on lengths of rope, the remains of which were also found coiled in the back of the tower.

The lines of short pegs for wrapping the hoisting ropes on are intact, though disconnected from the internal sidewalls as they should be.  It is built of wooden beams, labored over, and the floor is cement with center drain and run-off drain at the edge to catch and remove the water that collected at the bottom.  A simple ladder made from four by four beams nailed to the north wall provides access to the top, a feat which one would luckily not have to make often when the tower was in working order.

However, the era of the hose tower was relatively short, and just as innovation in hose technology led to the disuse of leather hoses in favor of linen ones, the rapidly advancing tide of progress soon brought a new contender to the stage; rubber hoses.  Galvanized rubber, first discovered in the 1830s, had seen little use in hoses save for patch jobs on split leather seams despite having come into being 20 years before canvas hoses.  When canvas hoses came along, rubber was again not used, as the canvas hoses themselves were waterproof and the addition of rubber to a canvas hose would have turned them from a cheap, easily mass producible hose to an expensive, hard to make one.  However, by the 1920’s rubber had become incredibly cheap, and the rise of the automobile had spawned the development of new types of rubber; stronger, more flexible, able to sprayed in thin coats like paint or extruded in strips and cylinders dozens of meters long.   This signaled the end of the canvas fire hose.  Because of unlined hose’s lack of durability, they were rapidly replaced with rubber hoses for municipal fire service use.  While they do still make canvas hoses, their heyday has come and gone.  The rubber water hose we all know and love came into being fully in the 1930’s, never to be replaced. 

It had all of the upsides of cotton and none of the downsides.  It was strong, light, flexible, waterproof, and very water resistant.  It doesn’t mold or rot or tear, and as long as it doesn’t sit idle for years it will not harden or crack. 

And so hose towers everywhere fell into disuse, and eventually disrepair.  With the rise of rubber hose the canvas hose towers, built proudly at the side of fire stations just 30 years earlier, closed their doors forever as the sole purpose for their existence was rendered obsolete.  Most were either torn down, repurposed, or walled off and forgotten, collapsing in on themselves after decades of rain and wind took their tolls on their hollowed skeletons. 

Where there used to hundreds in Maine alone, there are now only a handful left standing, and the vast majority of these remaining towers were either built of brick or very short wooden ones of 25 feet or less.  The fire hose towers of Brunswick and Fryeburg are gone, Freeport’s has been converted to a private residence, and once upon a time the little town of Winterport even had two, both of which have since been torn down.  

Bridgton’s hose tower is special because it is a full size wooden tower, over 80 feet tall, still here and already protected by virtue of the fire station’s being our current museum.  Bridgton is lucky to still have a fire tower, and it is even luckier that we can so readily turn it into a historical exhibition.  And, luckily, we are not alone in this.

The town of Hallowell, up near Augusta on the Kennebec River, also has a hose tower, and while researching ours I took a trip up to visit and tour theirs.  I find it very funny, their hose tower was also preserved for all these years by virtue of a museum, the entire second floor of the fire station there being devoted to the history of fire-fighting in Maine.  Hallowell’s tower even saw extended use into the 1950s, used as an alarm tower to signal curfew, and even in the forties as an air-raid siren tower which thankfully never saw use.

As it turns out, I was delighted to find that Hallowell’s tower is a perfect twin to ours, theirs having been built just a year earlier in 1901.  This was very important because their tower, while structurally unstable and in the process of being re-enforced, is almost wholly intact internally, with all the hoists and ropes and hoses still in functionally working order.  Bridgton’s tower on the other hand is firm and stable, but relatively gutted.  However, there is good news.  Because of these two tower’s incredibly similar structure, to the end that it is strongly believed they shared a builder, it will not be too difficult to restore Bridgton’s tower to its former glory. 

A large amount of what was believed to be missing has been found, and save the original ropes it looks like we have almost everything we would need to return it to its original condition.  Pictures taken of Hallowell’s will provide very useful information on the proper arrangement of all the pieces and mechanical parts we have found loose and disassembled a tower.  This is very much a work in progress, but we hope that in coming years we can have a proper fire station exhibit where the people of town can come to learn more about the way the hose tower, and indeed the fire station as a whole, has served and is continuing to serve the town.