Engine Company No. 23

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Engine Company No. 23 is a modest, two-story red brick firehouse in an Arts and Crafts interpretation of an Italian Renaissance Revival style. Designed by prominent architects Hornblower & Marshall and architect Snowden Ashford (1866-1927), the firehouse serves as a visible landmark of Foggy Bottom since its construction in 1910. This firehouse is the smallest of all DC's firehouses, measuring approximately thirty-five feet wide by ninety feet deep. It is also one of only two firehouses in the city intended to accommodate a single piece of apparatus.

The interior plan is unusual among other DC firehouses; rather than having side-by-side spaces inside the firehouse for fire engines, Engine Company No. 23 has two single "stacked" spaces (engine-behind-engine), accessible by single apparatus doors at both the front and rear of the building. This innovative arrangement is symptomatic of the developed Foggy Bottom neighborhood, requiring a firehouse with a narrow width due to limited residential space.

Identified for sale in 1940, the neighborhood protested to save the building for its original purpose. Engine Company No. 23 is still in operation today.

DC Inventory: June 23, 2005
National Register: June 6, 2007