Lydia Street Fire Station

Three years after the 1952 hiring, a hotel room on the twelfth floor of the Stephen F. Austin caught fire, and Willie Ray Davis climbed the stairs with the fire chief to put it out. In 1969 he felt his way without breathing gear through smoke at an East Austin apartment complex and lifted a child from a crib; she died weeks later. Nathaniel Kindred served twenty-four years before a heart attack took him in 1977 at a fire scene, after he had helped put out a closet fire. Davis retired after thirty years.

What the plaque says

Lydia Street Fire Station After its establishment in 1839, the burgeoning city of Austin battled fires regularly, prompting officials to establish volunteer fire stations around the city. In 1886, they placed East Austin Hose Company No. 4 on Lydia Street near 11th Street in a two-story brick building. Paid firemen replaced the volunteer units in 1916, and in 1947, the Texas legislature authorized firefighters to be classified as government employees. After a public vote the following year, Austin's firefighters achieved civil servant status. This vote laid the foundation for the hiring of Austin's first black firemen. In 1952, Willie Ray Davis, Nathaniel H. Kindred and Roy D. Greene were hired to serve the Lydia Street Station. Greene resigned after some years on the force, but Davis and Kindred enjoyed long careers with the Austin Fire Department. Kindred gave his life in the line of duty. Davis rose to the rank of Captain, the first African American to do so. Many more of the first African American civil servants started at this station. The men at Lydia Street Station continued to experience racism from their coworkers, with one receiving formal punishment for refusing to obey an order to transfer to Station #4. Additionally, the area around Lydia Street Station faced unemployment and lack of investment in public infrastructure. In 1969, the Lydia Street Station was retired when a new station was built about two miles east on Webberville Road. The Lydia Street Station was demolished in the 1970s, and the site remained an empty lot until 1982, when the city sold the land to a nonprofit developer. To honor the legacy of the men who served here, the City of Austin opened the Pass the Torch Academy in 2002, which focused on recruiting African American and other minority populations to the Austin Fire Department. The station's legacy of bravery and service contributed to the growth and prosperity of the city. (2021)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Texas State Cemetery — steps away
  A hill east of the Capitol that began with one general's grave in 1851 and now holds Stephen F. Austin, governors, Barbara Jordan and more than 2,000 Confederate veterans and widows.
• French Legation State Historic Site — 0.3 mi
  A raised pine house built in 1840 and 1841 for France's envoy to the Republic of Texas, who left Austin in a rage over a neighbor's pigs before it was finished.
• George Washington Carver Museum — 0.3 mi
  East Austin's museum of Black history and culture, grown from a segregated branch library moved across town in 1933, with a permanent exhibit on Juneteenth at its core.
• Texas State Capitol — 0.9 mi
  Austin's fourth statehouse, a Renaissance Revival capitol of 1888 that stands 311 feet to its Goddess of Liberty and was restored after the 1983 fire.

More markers nearby

• Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church — steps away
• Victory Grill — steps away
• Stuart Female Seminary — steps away
• Dr. Gideon Lincecum — steps away