Fire Chief Louis P. Seiler grew up in Cuyahoga Falls and became a volunteer fire fighter in the days when the volunteer brigade ran to answer the alarm by hitching the horses and hoofing it through the streets to the scene of the fire. The Chief spent over forty years as a member of the volunteers, a captain on the first full time group and then became fire chief in 1938.
Some of our (great) grandparents may have told the story from the 1920s about Lou Seiler making a mad dash down Broad Boulevard in the dead of night, calling out to all the volunteer firefighters get moving and help with a fire. Chief Seiler then resided on the south side of Broad, one house away from Fourth Street and always made that sprint in just a matter of seconds.
The fire department, at that time, was located in the old City Hall located at Front Street and Broad Boulevard, the same station that housed its very first motorized fire truck the city every purchased.
The firemen and all their apparatus moved to their new home in 1927 – No. 1 Station House on Front Street. The building was erected as a memorial to those men of volunteer days and to the men who in 1927 held down a berth as full time firemen.
In 1949 a new fire house was built on the east side of Cuyahoga Falls at the intersection of Portage Trail and High Street. The station started out with one fire truck and eight men.
