I saw this tweet the other week from the Fairfax County, Virginia fire and rescue department, and you know what I immediately wondered:

Fairfax County Fire/Rescue @ffxfirerescue

A lovely 4-15 day today! Original Station (4)15, Chantilly, was built by the Chantilly Vol. FD in 1943. Additions were made to the station over the years. The current station was opened in 1989 just down the street. Original station is still around and is now a business. #FCFRD

April 15th 2022

1 Retweet7 Likes

They didn’t identify exactly where the original structure is, or what it is today, so I had to look it up. Quick Google searches didn’t return anything.

So I went over to a Northern Virginia history Facebook group I follow, and searched with a few keywords. A post that I now can’t find again—that’s how good Facebook search is—came up, and someone said that the original fire station was a title and loan shop.

I looked up title and loan shops in Chantilly, and this one came up. It isn’t “just down the street,” however, and it also doesn’t look like a fire station. (It likely has its own interesting history—look at the cedar shake façade covered over by the TitleMax awning!)

Then I found this 2007 news story about firefighters displaying memorabilia from the old station in the new one. It states, “Station 15 was across the street from its current spot behind Anita’s Restaurant on Route 50 west.”

That narrows it down, and it might be possible to spot it, but I asked my own question at the Facebook group to see what answers I got. I didn’t get many, but I got what I needed. A fellow replied, “I think the Chantilly pool and spa store might be in the original building. I worked at the original station in the mid 70s.”

That store—NoVa Hot Tubs & Swim Spas—is indeed just down the road and across the street from the new fire station. Here’s the map. (U.S. 50 is at the north end; the TitleMax above is on U.S. 50, by the way.)

So what does the structure look like? Here are the full photos of its fire station days from the tweet at the top of this post. It looks like the expansion(s) happened by the time the second photo was taken—there’ s an extra garage bay in that one, sticking out from the rest of the façade.

So what does the pool showroom in the old fire station look like? Is it the same foundation and walls only, or is it actually recognizable? You tell me:

Wait—I said pool showroom, not title loan shop! It turns out that this location was a title loan shop, up until a couple of years ago. Google does not have Street View imagery that captures the pool showroom, but that is definitely the current business.

If you’re wondering whether the original structure survived that transition, you can rest easy. Here’s a screenshot from their Google reviews page:

Same awning, same sign, same giant former-garage-bay windows, same siding over the original brick walls. Maybe one day it will be revealed again.

One more thing: the tweet from the fire and rescue department identifies the original fire station as being built in 1943. Out of curiosity I looked it up in the official Fairfax County property records system, and it identifies the year built as 1900. (So do a bunch of real-estate listings I found, like this one.) Did the fire department get it wrong, or the public record? I’m betting the record. These are not always the final word.

Wrapping up, this big intersection in Chantilly is a place I’ve driven by or through dozens of times. It’s unremarkable looking. So it’s always really neat to see bits and pieces of a previous era still sitting there, hiding in plain sight.

Related Reading:

Didn’t Used To Be a Pizza Hut

Kinney Shoes’ Architectural Afterlife

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