Amoskeag Fire Engine

The shiny Amoskeag, here bearing markings for the Brooklyn Fire Department, was the high-tech fire pumper of the 1870s. Though fire engines were still horse drawn in this period, the most expensive engines featured steam-driven pumps, giving firemen a much more powerful tool to fight the enormous fires that plagued the increasingly crowded industrial cities of the United States. The model shown in this print played a key role during the great Boston fire of 1872, protecting the Old South Meeting House, while all the buildings that surrounded that icon of Revolutionary-era Boston succumbed to the flames. In a bitter irony, the very building in which this lithograph was printed succumbed to the flames that night. The print is itself a piece of high technology, taking advantage of the high-gloss inks and multiple colors available for the finest chromolithographs of the era.