San Francisco Firefighters’
Helmets
San Francisco firefighters wear the traditional Cairns and Bro. “New
Yorker”
helmet modified to meet Federal safety requirements. For a
time in
the 1980s the San Francisco Fire Department switched to a dark plastic
“Darth
Vader” helmet, unfavorably reminiscent of those worn by the German
Army during
WWII. They were not popular with the firefighters, and some of the
helmets
actually melted in fires. In the late 1980s the Department switched back to
the
traditional leather helmet.
This 1930 New Yorker magazine article gives the history of the
Cairns and Bro. leather helmets.
The Eagle on the Helmet
 In our simple, childish way, we always believed that the eagle
adorning a
fireman’s helmet meant something special—the spirit of American
enterprise,
maybe, or onward to victory. We were wrong. The eagle, it seems, just
happened, and has no particular significance at all. Long, long, ago,
around 1825
to be exact, an unknown sculptor did a commemorative figure for the
grave of a
volunteer fireman. You can see it in Trinity Churchyard today; it shows
the hero
issuing from the flames, his trumpet in one hand, a sleeping babe in the
other,
and, on his hat, an eagle. Now, nobody was wearing eagles at the time; it
was a
flight of pure fancy on the sculptor’s part, but as soon as the firemen saw it
they
thought it was a splendid idea, and since every fire company in those days
designed its own uniforms, it was widely adopted at once. It has remained
on
firemen’s hats ever since, in spite of the fact that it has proved, frequently
and
conclusively, to be a dangerous and expensive ornament indeed. It sticks
up in the
air. It catches its beak in window sashes, on telephone wires. It is always
getting
dented, bent and knocked off. Every so often, some realist points out how
much
safer and cheaper it would be to do away with the eagle, but the firemen
always
refuse.
We learned all this about firemen’s hats in the course of a little talk we
had the
other day with Mr. John Arthur Olson, of 183 Grand Street. Mr. Olson’s
father
started making hats for firemen in 1867, and Mr. Olson himself has been at
it all
his life. Recently, he amalgamated with his only rivals, Cairns & Brothers,
a few
 doors down the street; they comprise now the only firm in America in the
business. Foreign firemen wear a metal helmet which weighs five pounds,
but our
fire laddies’ hats weigh only thirty ounces. Despite this they give even
better
protection against falling bricks than the European ones do. They are
made of
stout tanned Western cowhide, a quarter of an inch thick,
hand-sewed,
reinforced
with leather strips which rise like Gothic arches inside the crown, padded
with
felt. The long duckbill, or beavertail, effect which sticks out at the rear is
to keep
water from running down firemen’s necks. Hats for battalion chiefs and
higher
officers, are white, everyone else’s black.
Hook-and-ladder
companies
have red
leather shields (attached just under the eagle), engine companies black with
white
numerals, the rescue squad blue.
According to Mr. Olson, there isn’t much money in making firemen’s
hats.
They sell for eight dollars and seventy-five cents, and as it is all handwork
the
profit is small. Besides, they last so long—about ten years, on the
average.
Matter of fact, the only thing that keeps the shop busy is the business of
repairing
the eagles, which are always coming in for regilding, refurbishing. For
fixing
eagles, the standard rate is one dollar, and has been for generations.
The New Yorker
June 14, 1930
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