Lower Hutt Central Fire Station is a former

fire station __NOTOC__ A fire station (also called a fire house, fire hall, firemen's hall, or engine house) is a structure or other area for storing firefighting apparatuses such as fire apparatus, fire engines and related vehicles, personal protective equ ...

Lower Hutt Lower Hutt () is a list of cities in New Zealand, city in the Wellington Region of New Zealand. Administered by the Hutt City Council, it is one of the four cities that constitute the Wellington#Wellington metropolitan area, Wellington metropoli ...

, New Zealand. When it was built in 1955 it was considered to be one of the most modern fire stations in the southern hemisphere. The fire station is strongly influenced by the work of architect

Frank Lloyd Wright Frank Lloyd Wright Sr. (June 8, 1867 – April 9, 1959) was an American architect, designer, writer, and educator. He designed List of Frank Lloyd Wright works, more than 1,000 structures over a creative period of 70 years. Wright played a key ...

. It was designed to represent a post war, modern city, with expanding industry and

state housing Public housing, also known as social housing, refers to Subsidized housing, subsidized or affordable housing provided in buildings that are usually owned and managed by local government, central government, nonprofit organizations or a ...

projects. The building along with the Lower Hutt town hall, civic administration building and war memorial library saw the city become a symbol of post-war

modernist Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy), subjective experience. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and soc ...

construction during the 1950s. When the station first opened it included such features as a control room where the fire engines could be started and stopped remotely, and the appliance doors could open automatically. It was the first fire station in New Zealand to have the technology to record calls. In the mid-2000s, the New Zealand Fire Service reviewed its coverage of Lower Hutt. On 15 January 2007, the station closed along with fire stations at

Petone Petone (Māori language, Māori: ''Pito-one'') is a large suburb of Lower Hutt, Wellington, New Zealand. It stands at the southern end of the Hutt Valley, on the northern shore of Wellington Harbour. Europeans first settled in Petone in Januar ...

and Point Howard, with crews and engines split between three new stations at

Alicetown Alicetown is a central suburb of Lower Hutt located at the bottom of the North Island of New Zealand. The suburb is situated north of the major suburb of Petone and west of the Lower Hutt CBD. Its boundaries are the Ewen Bridge that crosses ...

Avalon Avalon () is an island featured in the Arthurian legend. It first appeared in Geoffrey of Monmouth's 1136 ''Historia Regum Britanniae'' as a place of magic where King Arthur's sword Excalibur was made and later where Arthur was taken to recove ...

and

Seaview Seaview or Sea View may refer to: Places * Clifton Beach, Karachi, also known as Sea View, a beach in Pakistan * Sea View, Dorset, a suburb in England * Seaview, Isle of Wight, a small village in England * Seaview, Lower Hutt, an industrial subur ...

. These three career stations are backed up by volunteer brigades at

Stokes Valley Stokes Valley, a major suburb of the city of Lower Hutt in the North Island of New Zealand, lies at the edge of the city, seven kilometres northeast of the city centre. It occupies the valley of a small tributary of the Hutt River, called Sto ...

Wainuiomata Wainuiomata () is a large Commuter town, dormitory suburb of Lower Hutt, in the Wellington#Wellington metropolitan area, Wellington metropolitan area in New Zealand. Its population was estimated as being as of with a density of 1,600 people ...

and

Eastbourne Eastbourne () is a town and seaside resort in East Sussex, on the south coast of England, east of Brighton and south of London. It is also a non-metropolitan district, local government district with Borough status in the United Kingdom, bor ...

. Since then, the building has been unoccupied and suffered from vandalism. In 2010 the station was officially protected from demolition by the New Zealand Historic Places Trust (since renamed to

Heritage New Zealand Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga (initially the National Historic Places Trust and then, from 1963 to 2014, the New Zealand Historic Places Trust; in ) is a Crown entity that advocates for the protection of Archaeology of New Zealand, ancest ...

). The station was purchased by property developer Mike Friday in November 2015, who is planning to renovate the station into apartments.

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{{Commons category-inline Fire stations completed in 1955 Buildings and structures in Lower Hutt Heritage New Zealand Category 1 historic places in the Wellington Region Fire stations in New Zealand 1950s architecture in New Zealand 1955 establishments in New Zealand 2007 disestablishments in New Zealand