Oslo main fire station before demolition 2024 Bergseth, Håkon / The Norwegian Museum of Science and Technology
The Norwegian Museum of Science and Technology was allowed to visit the beautiful functionalist building from 1939 to document the building before it is demolished. We were accompanied on the trip by the long-time operations manager of the building, Rolf Kr. Forsmo. The museum's photographer and conservator spent a whole day searching through the abandoned fire station for traces of the fire station's long life in active service.
The museum was contacted with a request if we would consider taking over the original emergency power generator from 1939 which was in the basement. It was a large MAN diesel engine with a generator. The museum did not have the opportunity to take over the object, but wanted to visit the station with a photographer to document the building in its vacated condition, before demolition.
Photographer Bergseth and the guide Forsmo in the wagon hall. Photo: Andreassen, Dag K. / NTM
The head of the machine, our guide Rolf Kr. Forsmo. Photo: Bergseth, Håkon / NTM
Emergency power generator in the basement of Oslo main fire station, with MAN diesel engine and 220 v generator. Photo: Andreassen, Dag K. / NTM
One thing we noticed was, for example, that there was at least one speaker in almost every room. This reinforced the impression of the house as a machine: the signals had to come out simultaneously in all rooms and reach everyone, no matter what they were doing, and at the same time avoid making noise. Important information - no noise! There were loudspeakers of all kinds and generations - including original typhoons in the carriage hall and some forgotten original speakers in the basement. Several of the speakers had channel selectors so they could also be used for entertainment from a radio or music system centrally located in the house. These again had to be able to be interrupted and overridden if the alarm went off. In recent times, light alarms were added, in case the crews e.g. trained with own music on headphones.
And everyone knows the fire rods - which are called sliding rods in fire language. It's the way to get down through the floors to the fire trucks - but how does it actually work? And is it really the fastest way, or is it just a tough tradition? The bars of pure brass had been removed when we were there, along with parts of the fine wood paneling on the inside of the downpipes. Certainly some have been taken care of by the Breann Museum! Maybe the public can test them one day? We learned that each downspout only went between two floors. To get from the far floor - which was the highest level for the sliding bars - and all the way to the cars in the carriage hall, you had to change runs on each floor. Safer that way - nobody got hit in the head if they threw themselves on the pole on their floor! The number of runs increased down the floors. At the very bottom of the carriage hall there were seven landing pads distributed over two runs on each side of the hall.
Oslo's main fire station was built between 1937 and 1939. The architect was the City Architect's office v/ Harald Aars. The planning began with marching orders from the chairmanship in December 1935. A building committee was set up of members from the Fire Board and the City Architect, who, among other things, traveled around Europe and gathered information on how modern fire stations should be built and equipped.
Most of the main fire operations around date from the time when horses pulled fire engines and steam nozzles around the cities. So also in Oslo, where the old fire station around Oslo Cathedral had been supplemented by more modern garages for fire engines on Youngstorget and in new fire stations around the city. But the horse era lived on in the internal jargon - the "garages" were still called carriage halls!
Construction of a new main fire station. Photo: Unknown / Oslo city archive
Plan ready
Oslo's long-time fire chief, Erling Hagen, led the study tours and the report that summarized the lessons learned from Europe, and proposed a plan for the new fire station. One of the most important modernization points was precisely to adapt the fire station to the age of the car, with the wagon hall as the heart of the station. The location of this and the correct exits on the correct roads depended on the most important planning measures to ensure valuable minutes in emergency response time to most places in the city.
The response time that was the basis for the planning was that, according to European city standards, it should take a maximum of 5 minutes from the time the alarm went off until the fire brigade should be on the spot with extinguishing crews. This included the alarm time - the time from when the alarm went off until the crew was in place in the cars. This time in Oslo was already down to 30 seconds during the day, up to 60 seconds at night. Driving in Oslo was still not all the world's speed adventures - fire chief Hagen soberly stated that the average speed in Oslo would hardly exceed 30 km/h.
This meant that planning had to be done for a good structure of sub-fire stations in addition to the main fire station. In any case, this was an advantage in light of the legitimate concern of the time: the danger of air raids. Here, all the eggs did not have to be collected in one basket!
Fire Chief Hagen demonstrates the sea spray for London's Fire Chief Commander Firebrace. Photo: Oslo city archive
The plan was approved by the elected representatives, who signed off in December 1936 by granting the first NOK. 500,000 for the purchase of land and starting the construction works. A total of NOK 4.6 million was to be allocated for the construction - equivalent to just over NOK 150 million in 2023. By then, 80 years had passed since the previous main fire station in Kirkebasarene around Oslo Cathedral had been put into use at a cost of NOK. 42640 - just over 3 million 2023 kroner.
It was quite a large sum, and went to stationing 17 fire crews with horses, carts and other equipment. In 1940, the main fire station was to provide space for 80 men out of Oslo's total of 230 fire crews. There were also a number of new functions in place.
Construction work began in April 1937, first with the excavation of the site down to the alum slate rock, which had to be covered with an asphalt mixture to stabilize the ground. Scaffolding was then erected for the construction of the concrete building, which was to be covered with facade stone in red brick.
The raw building was completed in the autumn of 1938, but the fitting-out work took longer than planned, partly because of the outbreak of war and the occupation, which made it difficult to obtain both materials and people for the entry. In March 1941, some finishing touches remained, but the fire service wanted to move in "regardless of the conditions", as Dagbladet wrote. It was better than the old fire station anyway!
The new main fire station was opened in March 1941, at a time when this event naturally did not receive much attention due to the German occupation and the raging world war. Only Dagbladet wrote about the event in 1941, but the building was thoroughly presented in the journal Byggekunst in 1942 .
The report in Byggekunst presented a magnificent building with 8 floors. The basements with their technical rooms, including the emergency power generator that had been put in place with a view to security in wartime.
The first floor on the ground level facing Arne Garborgsplass at the front, and the backyard facing Hospitalgata, housed the large carriage hall and workshops, spare garages and crew quarters for drivers and workshop staff. In addition, it was here that the telegraph room itself - the important alarm center - was located next door to the carriage hall.
The second and third floors were planned so that this was where the emergency crews would stay most of the time, with the shortest possible route to the emergency vehicles. Here were the bedrooms with personal wardrobes with the necessary equipment, here were the training rooms and the large gymnasium which was also a cinema hall. On the third floor were living rooms such as the living room and library, kitchen and dining room.
The building's fourth floor was set aside for various workshops and laboratories, as well as a smoke diving department with a smoke diving school for the entire eastern country, which the new main fire station was planned to serve as.
Teaching rooms for courses and training were set up on several of the floors as other functions were toned down, such as a separate fine mechanical workshop, electrician, shoemaker and tailor workshop and other special workshops for equipment maintenance. This was gradually transferred to other suppliers.
The fifth floor had other training rooms for the crews, as well as offices for the various chiefs, including the large corner office of the fire chief, and a boardroom for the Fire Board.
The fire chief and deputy fire chief were also assigned magnificent corner apartments on the floor above in the main wing. This sixth floor was therefore the top floor in the side wings, which also had offices here.
There were also apartments in a separate wing facing Møllergata, with the address Møllergata 25b. These were rented out to fire crews, and the purpose was to ensure that even key personnel who were not on duty had a short distance from home in the event of a major emergency and full mobilization. These five apartments were eventually converted into offices.
The fire brigade at Stortorget. Karl Johans gate 11. Main fire station in Oslo until 1939. Undated. Photo: Unknown / Arbeiderbevegelsen's archive and library
The tall tower on the corner of Møllergata / Hospitalgata made the fire station visible in the city. The tower had a dual function: one half was open all the way through the 12 floors, and this room was used to dry hoses after use. A separate hoisting device was installed for this - a large metal frame where the hoses were attached down in the basement before the whole thing was lifted up for hanging drying. This was important in an era of hoses with a core of woven textile coated with oil impregnation. With modern plastic hoses, the need disappeared.
The other main point about the tower was that it was a practice tower. The half with stairwells, windows and rooms was built for exercises with ladder trucks, facade rescue, blind orientation in stairs with tape in front of fire helmet visors, or with the entire tower filled with smoke, and use of full smoke diving equipment.
All this was an important part of the training and drill of the fire crews. In Oslo, it was the main fire station and the old Smestad fire station that had such training towers. This function was eventually moved to a separate fire training field at Lahaugmoen, where it could be practiced even more realistically.
A third function of the fire tower was highlighted by fire chief Hagen: It was simply aesthetic - "an architecturally very important part of the station"! This perhaps rhymes with the notion that the tower was also the watchtower from olden times, where firemen looked out for smoke in the city, around the clock.
The tower in Oslo Cathedral had this function from 1850 - also practical in relation to the fact that the new main fire station was added to Kirkebasaren shortly afterwards. From here, they both detected the approach of fire and alerted the crews and the city with signal shots and bells, and flags or torches out the window pointing in the direction of the fire. This manual monitoring came to an end as telegraphic signaling systems were developed. There is no longer a Tobias in the tower looking out over the city...
The backyard of Oslo's main fire station, seen from the north wing towards the south wing and the hose drying and training tower. Folkets Hus on Youngstorget can be seen in the background. Photo: Andreassen, Dag K.
The terrorist bomb in the Government Quarter on 22 July 2011, which killed 8 people and injured dozens, before an incredible 69 young people were killed on Utøya, destroyed most of the buildings in the Government Quarter. The main fire station was also heavily damaged. Virtually all the windows were broken, and a car part crashed into the crew's break room on the third floor, which luckily was empty at the time. The fire trucks' drive doors were warped in their frames and could not be opened when the fire and rescue work was most needed. Other stations came to the rescue, and in a short time the gates to the main fire station were also broken open so that the crews there could also do their job.
The fire station was restored, but in the longer term the rezoning of the Government Quarter with all the new security needs led to the decision that the main fire station had to be moved. The most important argument was that the Hammersborg Tunnel during the Government Quarter had to be rebuilt to improve safety. The gathering of several ministries within the security zone in the new quarter also meant that the fire station plot had to be reallocated to the last of the new government buildings.
