By Sally Capone
Madison Eagle
MADISON, N.J. – If the Ahrens-Fox Model P-4 fire engine that is temporarily housed in the Madison Fire Department at 62 Kings Road could talk, it would have a lot of tales to tell about its 91-year journey from Madison and then back again this September.
It would tell how it came to be in Madison in 1921 when the borough’s benefactor, Geraldine Rockefeller Dodge, donated the “Rolls Royce” of fire engines to the borough after a fire destroyed several barns on her estate, taking with it her favorite horse.
For Mrs. Dodge, only the best would do for Madison as she again demonstrated in 1935 with the donation of the Hartley Dodge Memorial building at 50 Kings Road.
As the Madison Eagle reported on July 30, 1920, when the Fox was purchased for the astronomical sum of $18,000: “Madison will be the possessor of an Ahrens-Fox pumping engine of the latest and most modern type. . . the largest piece of fire-fighting machinery ever built by its manufacturer.” Model T Fords were going for $370 at the time.
Welcomed With Parade
A parade attended by more than 10,000 people came out to welcome the fire engine to Madison on May 14, 1921.
There were only 23 Ahrens-Fox Model P fire engines manufactured by the Ahrens Fox Company in Cincinnati, Ohio. Of the 23, only nine had the distinction of being P-4 models.
The others, purchased during the 1920s, were located in Passaic, Nashville, Tenn., Syracuse, N.Y., and Elkins Park, Pa.
The only other P-4 model still in existence, originally used by the Syracuse Fire Department, is owned by the Society for the Preservation and Appreciation of Antique Motor Fire Apparatus in America in Syracuse.
The Ahrens-Fox served “the Rose City” well for more than 40 years, until it experienced a parts failure as the Madison department was fighting a fire at St. Vincent Martyr Church on Green Village Road in 1954.
Deemed unreliable, it was sold to a fire department in Ashley, Pa., for parade duty – and then to Harrah’s casino and hotel in Reno, Nev., for display in an antique automobile collection.
When the Harrah’s collection was auctioned off in 1980, the Ahrens-Fox passed into the hands of private owners, disappearing from public view.
After discovering that the fire engine has been in a private collection in Ware, Mass., since 1981, Madison Fire Chief Louis DeRosa has made it his mission to bring it home.
For DeRosa, the Ahrens-Fox is a “piece of Madison history,” and he is determined to bring it back to the borough permanently.
To do that, a purchase price of $150,000 will need to be raised, DeRosa said. Fund-raising will begin after a 501(c3) is established, he said.
In the meantime, DeRosa and several others traveled to Ware to bring the truck back to Madison for a one-year loan.
Other than the removal of its windshield and front-mounted red warning light, the Ahrens-Fox fire engine remains much the same as it did when it arrived in Madison inside a box car so many years ago.
“I want to use it as a teaching tool, and to carry on the legacy of Geraldine Dodge,” DeRosa said.
Famed Philanthropist
Standard Oil heiress Ethel Geraldine Rockefeller married Marcellus Hartley Dodge Sr., president of the Remington Arms Company, in 1907. Her country estate in Madison was named Giralda Farms. After the couple’s only child, Marcellus Hartley Dodge Jr., died in an automobile accident in 1930 in France after his graduation from Princeton University, Mrs. Dodge built the marble-and-granite Hartley Dodge Memorial building on Kings Road and gave it to Madison as its borough hall, including its fire and police departments. The building, dedicated on Memorial Day in 1935, reportedly cost $800,000. Its first major renovation from 2008 through 2010 cost some $6.8 million.
Mrs. Dodge also donated the Madison Train Station across Kings Road from the Hartley Dodge Memorial.
Mrs. Dodge was known internationally for her horse and dog shows. She founded the Morris and Essex Dog Club, which staged the most prestigious dog show in the U.S. for decades, and was one of the founders of the Seeing Eye Foundation in Morristown. St. Hubert’s at Giralda was founded on her estate as a refuge for injured and lost animals. Today, St. Hubert’s operates animal welfare centers in Chatham Township and Branchburg Township and a dog training school in Madison.
At her death in 1973, she left $85 million to establish the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation to continue her charitable works in animal welfare, education, the environment and the arts. Her Madison estate became the site of the spacious 175-acre Giralda Farms office campus off Madison Avenue.
A portrait of Mrs. Dodge is prominently displayed in the Borough Council chambers at the Hartley Dodge Memorial municipal building.
Republished with permission from Madison Eagle/New Jersey Hills Media Group