What it is
The Hall of Flame is what happened when a Chicago businessman’s wife gave him an antique fire engine for Christmas in 1955. George F. Getz Jr. kept buying them, opened a museum for the collection in Wisconsin in 1961, and in 1974 moved the whole thing to Phoenix, into a long low building on Van Buren Street at the edge of Papago Park, across the road from the zoo and next to Phoenix Municipal Stadium, the old spring-training ballpark. It now describes itself as the largest firefighting museum in the world, and nobody has produced a bigger one.
The collection runs in order through five galleries. The first covers 1725 to 1908: hand-pulled pumpers worked by rows of men on the brakes, leather buckets, the brass-and-gilt parade carriages that nineteenth-century volunteer companies spent their fortunes decorating. The next galleries move through the horse-drawn steam engines, the first motor apparatus and the big mid-century pumpers and ladders, each restored to a finish you could eat off. A wildland gallery covers the hotshot crews and the Arizona fires, including Yarnell Hill in 2013. The National Firefighting Hall of Heroes, at the back, honors American firefighters killed in the line of duty or decorated for heroism, and has a memorial to the 343 New York firefighters of September 11. There is also a theater, a hands-on area and an engine children are allowed to climb.
Why leave Scottsdale for it
Because it is fourteen minutes from Old Town, across the street from the Phoenix Zoo, and the best rainy-afternoon museum in the Valley for a child under ten. Scottsdale’s museums are art and the West; this is trucks, and the Hall of Heroes gives the adults something to think about while the trucks are being climbed.
The practical version
Fourteen minutes from Old Town via Scottsdale Road and Galvin Parkway to Van Buren. Tuesday through Saturday, ten to six, last entry at five; closed Sunday and Monday. Modest admission, free parking. Ninety minutes, or two hours with a seven-year-old.
When to go
Any weekday it is open, which excludes Mondays. The museum is never crowded in the way the zoo is; a Saturday afternoon brings a dozen families and the occasional busload of a fire department’s retirees, and that is the peak. The building is air-conditioned and the galleries are big, which makes it the standing answer to a rained-out winter day or a July afternoon when the pool has been exhausted.
What to see, in order
- Gallery One. The hand pumpers and the parade carriages. Read the placards on how a company fought a fire in 1820 with forty men and a bucket brigade.
- The steamers. The horse-drawn era, with the nickel and brass restored; the horses, the placards explain, knew the route to a fire before the men did.
- The motor galleries. The 1910s through the 1960s, the engines that look like the ones in children’s books because they are.
- The wildland gallery. Arizona’s own firefighting, the hotshot crews and Yarnell Hill. Short and sobering.
- The Hall of Heroes. Save it for last and give it ten minutes.
With kids
The engine you can climb on is near the front, the hands-on area has helmets and gear, and the theater runs short films that work as a rest. Strollers are fine throughout. A child who likes trucks will want two hours; budget for it, and let them finish at the gift shop, which sells the toy versions. Our Scottsdale with kids note lists this under indoor afternoons.
The story
Getz was a Chicago financier and, by his own account, a man who had not thought much about fire engines until his wife gave him an antique engine for Christmas in 1955. He drove it in parades, then bought another, then began a serious collection of apparatus from the United States and Europe, restoring each piece to showroom condition. By 1961 the collection needed a building, and the Hall of Flame opened near the family’s Wisconsin home. In 1974 the museum moved to Phoenix and reopened on Van Buren Street on land at the edge of Papago Park, with room for the galleries to grow. The National Firefighting Hall of Heroes was added later as the museum’s memorial function, and the wildland gallery after Arizona’s own fire history demanded one.
The collection is unusual among transportation museums for the standard of its restoration; the pieces are finished to the gold leaf on the Victorian parade carriages, and the placards explain the work.
The Scottsdale connection
Scottsdale’s fire history is its own strange story: for more than half a century the city had no municipal fire department and contracted with Rural/Metro, the private company founded in Scottsdale in 1948, until the city finally formed its own department in 2005. Our McDowell fire history note covers the wildfires that the Preserve’s fire breaks and the wildland crews in the museum’s Arizona gallery are both about. The museum has pieces from Arizona departments across the galleries, and a docent will find you the local ones if you ask.
Getting there
Scottsdale Road south into Papago Park, where it becomes Galvin Parkway, past the Botanical Garden and the zoo to Van Buren Street; turn left and the museum is on the right next to Phoenix Municipal Stadium. About fourteen minutes from Old Town. The light rail’s 44th Street and Washington station is a long hot walk, so drive or rideshare, and park free in the lot.