In Quarters: Edsall Road Fire Station #26, Springfield, VA
This facility received the Renovations Gold award in the 2025 Firehouse Station Design Awards. Find the full list of winners here.
The modest, 8,300-sq.-ft. original Edsall Road Fire Station #26 was from an era when firefighting and rescue personnel operated as independent companies. The administrative and living spaces were located centrally in the station, and the bays for each were pushed to opposite ends of the building.
The confluence of interstates 95, 395 and 495 is one of the most highly concentrated areas of traffic incidents in the nation. As density increased in the region, the department had outgrown its facility and desperately needed more space for personnel and apparatus.
Further fueling the urgency, just as the architectural/engineering team was starting to design, a pumper that was parked inside of one of the bays caught fire, which destroyed a portion of the building. The firewall contained the spread of fire, but the need for a new space was greater and more urgent than ever.
The critical path in the design effort was constructing a temporary fire station (triple-wide trailer and frame-supported membrane structure on an adjacent site that was leased).
Once the temporary facilities were operational, the team completed the renovation and an addition on the tight, 1.49-acre site faster than an occupied phased renovation could have been performed.
The modernized design solution involved expanding the existing facility, providing four 76 ft.-deep drive-through bays and accommodating three shifts of 13 career staff within a rapid response layout.
The core of the existing building, including the living and administrative spaces, was renovated, while additions to the station included the bays, a training tower, a kitchen, an exercise room, and two- and four-person bunkrooms.
The station is organized around two response corridors through the building that enter the front and back of the apparatus bay, which allows for quick and direct response from anywhere in the station. The Station Design Awards judges concurred.
Apparatus bays directly access the street, with the apron area allowing ease of movement exiting the site. This impressed the judges. Administrative functions of the station are located at the front of the building, with the more private functions, including the bunkrooms, along the back of the building near to the staff parking and landscaped buffer to the adjacent residential neighborhood.
The Edsall Road Fire Station #26 renovation and addition focused on operational performance coupled with a healthy living environment. The final building design reduced building energy usage, created a healthy indoor environment by specifying materials with limited to no off-gassing, and provided views and natural daylighting to all regularly occupied spaces. The renovated station utilized much of the infrastructure of the original station for cost savings and environmental stewardship and was awarded LEED Silver Certification.
Architect: Samaha Associates