From horse-drawn carriages to gasoline-powered engines, Fire Station 5 in La Crosse covers lots of historical ground.
It spans “the entire gamut of firefighting in La Crosse,” Marc Zettler said.
Zettler and three other investors are seeking to restore the building to its former glory. The structure, located at 1220 Denton St., has sat empty since 2019. Zettler’s group bought the building from the city of La Crosse a short time later and recently got it listed on the State Register of Historic Places.
Zettler said the next step is getting the building on the National Register of Historic Places to qualify for both state and federal historic preservation tax credits.
It’s not hard to identify the building’s historic value. The two-story building was constructed in 1895, and for the next three decades it was home to a team of horses that pulled wagons to extinguish fires. On the first floor, two large engine bay door openings marked the entry to the large apparatus bay room used to house firefighting equipment.