Our First Town Hall
The town hall/firehouse combo also housed three jail cells
The firehouse/town hall grand opening in 1926. Note the three vehicle bays and their fire engines with the police sergeant’s motorcycle on the right.
With a population of only about 800 upon the 1908 creation of the Town of Potomac, little in the way of municipal services was initially expected. Town Council meetings were held in the second-floor auditorium of the Mt Vernon Avenue School. Organized fire protection began in 1913, provided by two volunteer fire companies, one for each of the two platted developments, St. Elmo and Del Ray, each with a hand-drawn wagon with two 35-gallon tanks of fire suppressant liquids, housed in a barn-like structure.
The Potomac Fire Department
In 1924, the fire companies were consolidated under the Potomac Fire Department in a single building, although the equipment had not changed. In August of that year, the town council authorized the purchase of two truck-type fire engines, a pumper and a chemical engine. These could be fed from the 10 fire hydrants in the town, although two were reported as having insufficient flow.
The new equipment mandated an expansion of the fire house. During the course of the work, Mayor Robert Yates stepped into an unprotected post hole in October 1924, resulting in a compound fracture of his right leg. This may have spurred a reconsideration of the hasty plans to simply build out the firehouse.
The Jail Welcomes Its First Guest
The town council began considering plans for a combined town hall/firehouse the next year and in June issued $25,000 worth of bonds for construction. The plans called for three jail cells in the basement, three fire engine bays on the ground floor, and an auditorium and a few offices on the second. The town had been gradually buying adjacent lots on the south side of East Windsor Avenue and the construction contract was awarded for $24,898 in January 1926. The building was completed in June, and in July hosted the first guest of its jail, R.C. Withers of Windsor Avenue, who had been arrested for DWI.
Of course, with the annexation by Alexandria on January 1, 1930, the town hall function disappeared, and the fire station was renamed AFD Station 2. Over time, fire engines got larger, and the fire station was converted from three bays to two larger ones, with an ambulance bay added on the east. That was abandoned with the opening of the station in Potomac Yard, and it now serves largely as a storage facility.