This post appeared in a previous blog and is here for posterity’s sake.

Fire Patrol No. 1, originally uploaded by plemeljr
Today at 0800 hours the New York Fire Patrol officially stood-down (final roll call) and will ceasse responding to calls. I’ve written about the Fire Patrol before, and I still believe that a vestige of old New York died this morning.
For those not in the know, the New York Fire Patrol was a 203-year-old department privately funded by the New York Board of Underwriters, charged with protecting property during fires. They would go in after the FDNY would secure the area; Fire Patrol members have the same equipment, but wear red helmets, and are dispatched by the FDNY. Here is a google cache with some good info. I also heard that there isn’t a lot of love lost between the FDNY and the Fire Patrol.
The argument for shutting down the Fire Patrol by the Underwriters was that the patrol was too expensive:

With dozens of patrolmen in attendance, patrol representatives called insurance companies greedy. The patrol costs $8.5 million a year to run, and patrol members estimate that they salvage more than $50 million in merchandise a year. “These people invented the bean counter,” the president of the Uniformed Fire Patrolman’s Association, James Nunez, said of the underwriters.

I always figured that the reason why the Patrol was being shut down was because the three remaining station houses are in prime real estate locations – one is in Midtown and one is in Cobble Hill; regardless, those properties will soon most likely be up for auction.
Today, an interesting comment was left on a previous entry:

as a former member of the fire patrol its said (sic) to see it go. I was at the happy land social club fire (ed link), the empire state building and so on. I don’t recall us doing much good. By the time the firei departmenr (sic) would let us in all the property was alrteady damaged. as far as the 1000+ runs a year nonsense. We would stay in quarters and then listen for the officer in the f.d. to call in the i.e.”10-35″ (ed10-35 is an alrm system emergecy), defective alarm and record in the book under then seargent Leonard that we responded. If my word is not sufficent check the logs they were always, the book runs, for 30 mins

If there are any current or former New York Fire Patrolmen who could contact me for interviews to chronicle your experience in the New York Fire Patrol, please email me at ima@grubbykid.com. I am interested in any ephemera which could be recorded and anything I could scan, such as any sort of general orders, pamphlets, insignia, etc besides your stories.
Full confidentiality is always honored. Also, if anyone has keys to the three firehouses, I would love to photograph the station houses.