Boston History: Fire Boxes

Boston has around 3,500 fire alarm boxes spread out around the city. Often overlooked by those passing by, these red boxes are still fully functional and hold a lot of history!

The first fire alarm boxes were installed in 1852, over two decades before the first telephone patent. Boston became the first city in the world to use the telegraph as part of a municipal fire alarm warning system. To this day, the system uses simple telegraph signals to transmit the number of the fire box that was activated.

The very first fire alarm box was used to send the alarm on the first day the boxes were installed in April of 1852. The very first fire box to be used can be found in the original location on Cooper Street in the North End today, although the box has been upgraded since its early days to a modernized version.

All fire alarm boxes have unique identification numbers. When the white lever is pulled, it sends an alarm to the Fire Alarm Office with the number of the box. The emergency responders who receive the alarm then look up the address of the box and send the closest available fire trucks to the spot.

In December of 2018, the 911 system in Boston went down for a day due to a computer glitch. While police and medical personnel relied on using lesser known 10 digit numbers for incoming emergencies, the fire department just told citizens to use the fire boxes. They came in useful during the downtime, when a fire broke out in a laundromat in the North End and a resourceful citizen pulled the fire alarm!

See them on many of our Group Boston Tours!