Tampa Firefighters Museum — Tampa, Florida

The Tampa Firefighters Museum is a nonprofit museum inside the 1911 brick firehouse on East Zack Street in downtown Tampa, the building that served as headquarters of the Tampa Fire Department and its Station 1 for most of the twentieth century. According to the museum, the building served as the headquarters for the Tampa Fire Department until 1978 when its modern-day replacement opened across the street. Tampa Fire Rescue still runs its headquarters and an active Station 1 on the opposite side of Zack Street, so the old and new stations face each other.

The museum states its mission as preserving the heritage of the Tampa Fire Department and promoting fire safety education and fire prevention in the community. The City of Tampa sends readers in the same direction: its page about Tampa Fire Rescue, a department it says was established on May 10, 1895, closes by pointing to the Tampa Firefighter's Museum website for a full history of the department. In practice, the old Zack Street firehouse is where the department's history is kept on public view in Tampa.

The building is the first exhibit. The museum's description of the building says this fire station was the last one built in Tampa with horse-drawn fire apparatus in mind, and that it was built of brick in 1911 to make it resistant to fire being spread from adjacent wood buildings. Floors inside still carry gashes left by horse-drawn, steam-powered engines rolling out to alarms, and the walls keep their fire shutters and the poles firefighters slid down from the second floor to the apparatus bays.

AIA Tampa Bay, in its Architecture of Tampa Bay guide, calls the building Old Number One and describes it as Florida's first stand-alone fire headquarters building. The guide records that it housed both the department headquarters and a working fire station for 67 years, and it describes the exterior as early twentieth century brick vernacular: a base of yellow sand brick, red brick walls, and a corbelled cornice of yellow sand brick under a red brick parapet. The headquarters end of the building, at the corner of Zack and Jefferson streets in downtown Tampa, is marked by brick quoins and raised parapet details.

The museum's venue pages add two details about the materials. The first-floor exhibit hall covers about 5,000 square feet behind three original, working bay doors, and the brick walls were made from the same bricks that rebuilt Ybor City after early 1900s fires. Across its working life the station saw what the museum calls a 63-year transformation from horse-drawn apparatus to diesel-powered rescue and firefighting vehicles in Tampa.

After Tampa Fire Rescue moved across Zack Street in 1978, the 1911 building had little use to the City of Tampa. The museum's account of its nonprofit founding says the building was being used as office space and equipment storage and was in poor condition. During the Tampa Fire Department centennial in 1995, a group of firefighters spoke with historians about saving the department's history, stories and traditions, and The Tampa Firefighters Museum, Inc. grew out of those meetings.

Working with city administrator Fernando Noriega, Jr. and Mayor Dick Greco, the group obtained title to the old fire station for the new nonprofit. Greco was then in his third term, which the Office of the City Clerk dates from April 1, 1995 to April 1, 2003. The museum gives 1997 as the year the 501(c)(3) organization was established, while AIA Tampa Bay dates the founding group of active and retired firefighters to 1996.

Restoration took roughly a decade. AIA Tampa Bay reports that the original doors were replicated using historic photographs and physical evidence, that surviving original windows served as templates for missing ones, and that the restored interior and a new addition designed to contrast with the old Tampa station were completed in 2007. WFTS Tampa Bay 28, reporting in 2025, gave 2005 as the year the museum opened. The building is designated a local historical landmark by the City of Tampa and has received the Commercial Restoration Achievement Award from Tampa Preservation Inc. and the Hillsborough County Historic Preservation Award, according to the museum.

The museum lists its exhibits in groups. Fire trucks occupy the old apparatus bays, with safety nets and racks where hoses were once laid to dry between calls. A large communications board and a set of street fire alarm boxes recall the era when Tampa residents reported a fire by going to the corner to pull a box. A metal sculpture in one corner is a memorial to the 343 New York firefighters who died on September 11, 2001. WFTS reported in 2025 that firefighters and their families donated most of the artifacts on display, and that an exhibit recognizes women in the Tampa department.

Paper records are part of the same story. The City of Tampa Office of the City Clerk lists the Tampa Firefighters Museum among its archival partners and hosts scanned documents from the museum's holdings: a Fire Chief's Report from 1903, the 1906 Rules and Regulations Governing the Tampa Fire Department, and National Board of Fire Underwriters reports on Tampa from 1923 and 1960.

The newest arrival is also one of the oldest machines. In May 2025 a 1925 Seagrave fire truck rolled into the museum to join the permanent collection, according to the museum's Seagrave gallery page. The pumper was built in September 1925 as a factory demonstrator shown at the International Association of Fire Chiefs convention in Louisville, Kentucky. Tampa bought it in 1926 under Mayor Perry G. Wall, whose term the City Clerk records as January 8, 1924 to January 3, 1928, and the truck was named for him, since Tampa named its apparatus after local dignitaries at the time.

The museum's history of the truck adds several Tampa specifics. It entered service painted blue with red wheels and was repainted red in the mid 1930s. The number 13 on its fuel tank marks it as the thirteenth motorized apparatus purchased by the city, which had phased out horse-drawn apparatus about 1914. The Seagrave operated from fire station 4 in Ybor City, left front-line service in the early 1950s, and served several more years as a reserve truck before passing into private ownership and a long restoration. It is fully operational today, and the museum describes it as a cornerstone of the collection.

Hours listed by the museum are Tuesday to Friday, 10 am to 2 pm, and there is no admission charge to tour the apparatus floor, with donations requested. The museum states that its nonprofit owns and operates the building and that no direct City of Tampa financial support goes to upkeep of the building or exhibits. WFTS reported in 2025 that the museum is run entirely by volunteers, many of them retired Tampa firefighters.

Two other programs share the old station. The Downtown Safety District is a children's exhibit for ages 1 to 8 modeled on a downtown Tampa streetscape, fire station, emergency room, ambulance and cafe; admission is $15.00 per child, and sessions are capped at 12 children. The museum notes that it does not book visits to Tampa Fire Rescue Station 1 across the street, which are arranged through the department's Public Education Coordinator. The museum home page reports that a new children's interactive play area opened in March 2026. Upstairs, the 1911 Ballroom, about 2,500 square feet, is rented for weddings and meetings, seating up to 150 with a dance floor, and rental proceeds support the museum's education and preservation work near the Tampa Riverwalk and Curtis Hixon Park.