The Gloucester Volunteer Fire & Rescue Service has embarked on construction of its new, 25,000-square-foot, $13 million+ Station One on Main Street in Gloucester Court House. Seventy-five years ago, the fire company was doing the same thing: raising funds and constructing its first Station One, which was erected at a cost of about $15,000. The building plans were announced in 1949 and it took a couple of years to organize the funding and get the work underway. Veteran GVRS member Gordon Townsend recently made available to the Gazette-Journal the carefully-preserved paperwork for this first station. The plans from architect C. W. Huff Jr. of Richmond called for a two-story cinderblock building with a brick veneer front “designed along colonial lines,” according to the Gazette-Journal. The two-bay station would house the trucks and equipment, already paid for, and the second floor would be used as a meeting room. Construction was expected by the fall of 1950. The firemen didn’t quite...