《TAIPEI TIMES》 Japanese-era fire station designated Hsinchu heritage

By Wang Chun-chieh and Jonathan Chin / Staff reporter, with staff writer

The Hsinchu City Government on Tuesday listed the Hsinchu City Fire Museum building as the city’s 33rd cultural heritage site.

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The building was constructed in 1936 by the Japanese colonial era Shinchiku Prefecture as the municipality’s main fire station, Hsinchu Cultural Affairs Bureau Cultural Heritage Section head Lin Hsiao-hua （林曉華） said.

The station consists of a two-story main complex and a six-story watchtower that was then the tallest structure in the city, she said.

The watchtower had direct lines of sight to every alley and corner of the city and had speaking tubes that ran down its structural walls, allowing watch personnel to spot fires and notify firefighters quartered bellow, she said.

After a joint conference, the city’s committees on cultural heritage; historical buildings, areas and archeological sites; and cultural tourism determined the building to be of significant value to local history and tourism, she said.

The structure bears testimony to the history of urban planning and firefighting during the colonial period, she said.

The tower’s unusual height, the decorated tiles on its vertical surfaces, a modernist aesthetic representative of public architecture of the colonial period and its carefully chosen location were taken into consideration, Lin said.

The city is working on plans to promote the site in public historical education and to request central government funds to realize the museum’s potential as a living part of the city’s history, she said.

新聞來源：TAIPEI TIMES