Fire marks offer protection for some
The recent Maui fires have brought fire protection to mind in a lot of places, both here and there. It is no stretch of the imagination to visualize something similar in our own backyard. We are fortunate here to have the modern resources we do to battle such blazes, but it wasn’t always thus.
There was a time when firefighting was a private enterprise and largely determined by the presence or absence of a fire mark on one’s front porch. Since then, fire marks have become highly collectible and worth exploring in light of recent events.
Physically, a fire mark is a plaque or crest with heraldic overtones that originated following the great London fire of 1666. Recognizing the huge need to create a more organized response to fires, a private company called the Fire Office was founded as the world’s first insurance firm. Similar companies soon emerged, and within 30 years, nearly 10% of London’s households had some sort of fire insurance.
These companies soon realized that the cost of prevention was far less than that of rebuilding, and began to form their own firefighting units. Fire marks were provided to homes that paid for coverage, each specific to a particular carrier. If an insured home caught fire, the presence of a fire mark would indicate which fire brigade should be deployed. No fire mark often meant no response.
It wasn’t long before the idea of fire insurance spread across the pond and landed in Philadelphia. As it happened, volunteer fire brigades were already entrenched in high-fire zones, offering a more or less consistent response across such communities. Nonetheless, fire marks were still common elements on
building exteriors, even if functioning more as advertisements than announcements of coverage. Indeed, it is believed that at least one insurance company paid a bounty to whatever brigade showed up first at a location bearing one of their fire marks. Not a bad idea.
As time passed and Philadelphia grew, the number of insurance companies and thus fire marks also expanded.
Among the most recognizable was that issued by the Philadephia Contributorship founded by Ben Franklin: a series of four hands grasping one another by the wrist.
Interestingly, one of its quirks was a refusal to insure properties with large trees in front that might block a close approach to the building. In contrast, the fire mark of the Mutual Insurance Company featured a lush tree as something of a jab at its larger competitor.
While fire marks continued to appear throughout the 19th century, many larger municipalities both here and abroad had formed public firefighting units by about 1850, rendering most marks thereafter as merely decorative. Today, collectors of fire marks, and there are many, are known as signevierists.
The Fire Mark Circle of America is a leading affinity group and a brisk trade exists both online and in galleries like ours.
If your taste runs to firefighting artifacts, you may already have a few. If not, keep your eyes out the next time you visit the City of Brotherly Love. There are still some to be seen.
Mike Rivkin and his wife, Linda, are longtime residents of Rancho Mirage. For many years, he was an award-winning catalogue publisher and has authored seven books, along with countless articles. Now, he’s the owner of Antique Galleries of Palm Springs. His antiques column appears Sundays in The Desert Sun. Want to send Mike a question about antiques? Drop him a line at info@silverfishpress.com