Cuartel General del Cuerpo de Bomberos de Santiago, Fire department headquarters in Santiago, Chile
The Cuartel General del Cuerpo de Bomberos de Santiago is a four-story building at the corner of Santo Domingo and Paseo Puente streets, designed by the German architect Adolfo Möller in a Second Empire style with Renaissance Revival traits. A 37-meter tower faces Paseo Puente, and a small turret sits on the chamfered corner. The exterior walls are clay brick masonry, the basement walls stone masonry, and the interior partitions adobe and wood framing.
Pedro de Valdivia, founder of Santiago in 1541, took the plot north of the Plaza de Armas; stables and the city's first prison stood there. After the 1647 earthquake a quarter for the governor's forces was built. In 1863 the property passed to the newly created Firefighters Corps, and in 1893 the colonial building was demolished; the German architect Adolf Möller designed the present building, opened in 1895.
The building's name recalls the Firefighters Corps of Santiago, founded in 1863 after the Church of the Company fire, on the initiative of José Luis Claro. Five of the seven original companies were housed here, and the last left in 1972. The corner turret sits on the chamfered corner, not on every side.
The building stands at the corner of Santo Domingo and Paseo Puente streets, one block from the Plaza de Armas, on the same block as the Central Post Office and the Museo Histórico Nacional. The 37-meter tower faces Paseo Puente. Since 1985 the ground floor has held retail units, so the facade is best seen from the street.
The tower once housed an alarm bell imported from the United States by Henry Meiggs between 1865 and 1866. This bell served as a critical alert system for firefighters responding to emergencies before modern communication tools existed.
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