A developer has offered to pay $20,000 for the Hoosick Falls Volunteer Fire Co. firehouse on Church Street, which the department vacated three years ago after building a new quarters at the corner of Main Street and Griffen Avenue.
"I'm in the process of buying it but it needs a lot of work," said Jim Shaw, who runs Jim Shaw & Associates on Saratoga Street. "It is structurally good but cosmetically needs a lot of work."
Shaw said it could take up to a year to fix up the place after he buys it.
"When I get done I'm going to lease it out for someone to run as a restaurant," Shaw said.
In his bid offer to the village, Shaw said he intends to renovate the building, brick up the large front door, and turn the place into a restaurant and bar by July 4, 2005. Shaw also plans to commission a muralist to paint the front of the building but stressed his desire to maintain the building's historic appearance.
"The general feeling around town here is that we should save and fix up our historic buildings and I'm all for that," Shaw said.
The ornate building was at one time remodeled with a wider front door to accomodate motorized fire apparatus but was too small for the volunteer company which now has two pumpers and an aerial truck as well as 20 active volunteers.
It was named the Seth Parsons Hose company when it was built in 1882. Parsons (1785-1845) was an inventor who patented a better industrial cloth-shearing machine that remained in use around the world for more than 75 years. Parson's also employed the town's renowned Walter A. Wood, the founder of the Walter A. Wood Mowing and Reaping-Machine Co., which put the village on the map in the mid- to late-19th century.
Wood came to the village in 1836 and worked as a blacksmith for Seth Parsons and later married Parson's daughter. Woods went on to develop improvements to farm machinery and in 1853 he obtained a patent for a horse-drawn mower that bore his name. The company, which for years made the world's best horse-drawn mowers, reapers and binders, employed more than 2,000 workers in 41 buildings situated on 85 acres and helped the village grow and become established.
