Excelsior Hook & Ladder Company No. 1
Organized December 5, 1874



In May, 1882, the Company purchased a 25 x 63 foot plot of land from William Raynor for a price of $100 on the west side of Parsonage A venue, later Church Street. On this lot the Company members built the first fire house in Freeport. The Company's second apparatus was built in 1900 with the work performed by Theodore Bedell's Blacksmith Shop. Although this apparatus was intended to be hand drawn, horses, supplied from Henry Schulter's Grocery Store, could be attached and draw the apparatus to fires.

The first factory built apparatus utilized by the Company was a 1911 American LaFrance which was generally termed a fourth-sized truck and was purchased for $1,573. This truck was equipped with a hitch allowing for two or three horses to be attached. The truck measured forty feet, one inch in length and weighed about 4,000 pounds. Its equipment consisted of 234 feet of ladders, fire lines, buckets, life net, chemical extinguishers and charges, pike poles, wall hooks, door opener, battering ram, wire cutters, lineman's climbers, tin roof cutters, shovels, pitchforks and a ten- inch Rushmore Searchlight. In August 1914, the truck was motorized by the addition of a three ton Mack Tractor with a four cylinder, 50 horsepower engine at a cost of $6,000.

The next apparatus employed by the Company was a 1924 Seagrave sixty-five foot wood aerial truck, the first one placed in service on Long Island. The building needed to be expanded, due to the arrival of the new truck; the Company had outgrown the building. Early in 1936 a deal was consummated with the Village Board of Trustees that in exchange for the old firehouse and property, the Village would secure the lot directly north, owned by the Freeport Council, Jr. O.U.A.M. (Order of United American Mechanics) and build a new firehouse. The Village appropriated $45,000 for this project.



The new spacious Company quarters were completed on October 23, 1937, which allowed for the storage of all equipment and apparatus and future expansion. In November of 1940, a Diamond-T flood light truck was placed in service followed by a 1942 Seagrave, 100 foot steel aerial ladder truck which was the first of its kind on Long Island.





On January 4, 1989, sadness struck the Company when Thomas A. Razzano died as a result of a heart attack that he sustained as he was responding to an alarm of fire.
In 2002 an addition was added to the building, doubling the size of the quarters, in anticipation of their next apparatus, a 2004 Seagrave 100 foot aerial truck with a ten man cab. Also that year the 1990 Simon Duplex Saulsbury Rescue Truck was transferred from Emergency Rescue Company No.9 for use as a "Special Equipment Unit" and replaced the former Collapse Unit vehicle.
