GUILDERLAND — The fire departments in McKownville and Guilderland Center are both marking their centennials this year. Volunteers founded the departments, each to serve its own neighborhood, the year World War I ended.

McKownville is celebrating with a parade set for Saturday, while Guilderland Center plans to hold a celebration next year.

Residents of McKownville foresaw that they would need a formal fire department and began planning for it a couple of years before its incorporation a century ago, said James White, who is a commissioner of the McKownville Fire District.

In 1916, White said, McKownville residents started to make plans for a fire department, he said. At the time, there was a country club where the University at Albany’s uptown campus is now, and a residential development, Country Club Estates, was planned; a bus or trolley line from the neighboring city of Albany was also extended  to the still “very rural and partially populated” neighborhood of McKownville, he said.

Recognition of the need for fire departments grew as the town began to take shape, he said.

Last summer, a planned $3.2 million renovation and extension of the McKownville firehouse to include a new second floor had been put on hold after residents voted to approve it, because bids came in higher than expected.

White said this week that plans are going forward and that costs will be substantially reduced by closing the firehouse during the renovation. Initially, he said, the plan had been to keep it open, “and that drove up the costs,” he said.

The department will still have engines nearby, White said, during the six months or so of construction, although the location is yet to be determined. It is possible that a temporary structure for an engine could be built on land the department owns across the street; a small squad vehicle could be housed in the original firehouse, built in 1935, around the corner, if it is deemed safe. And it might be possible to ask businesses in the area to provide a place for fire engines to park, White said.

He added that the department currently has a system of automatic mutual aid with its adjacent neighbors, Bethlehem and Westmere, during the days on weekdays; these other departments are also automatically called during these periods, when response times may be slower because members are at work. This could be extended to 24 hours a day, he said, noting that it would the chief’s decision.

“We just have to make do,” he said.

The plan now is to get bids this winter and then begin construction in about the spring of 2019.

Membership numbers are boosted in McKownville, White said, by the presence of the university. The department gets “great young people” who are, for instance, from firefighting families downstate or enrolled in criminal-justice programs.

Over the year, White said, the McKownville Fire Department has had students who decide to stay in the area. “And they become the backbone of our department.”

He estimated membership at about 60 including everyone: interior firefighters, exterior firefighters who can enter toxic areas outdoors, exterior firefighters who don’t enter toxic areas, and retired firefighters and people who offer support of all kinds.

“Running a fire department is like running a business or a small little government; it takes all kinds,” he said, explaining that members might include accountants, doctors, and others with a variety of skills.

In the summertime, when the university is out of session, McKownville encounters the same problems as other fire departments, with lagging numbers.

A parade in McKownville is planned for Saturday, June 9, White said. It will step off at noon at the Dutch Quad parking lot inside the university, head east on the university ring road and then south to Western Avenue. It will go west on Western Avenue, then up Elmwood Street to Fuller Road and along Fuller to Great Dane Drive, which will take it back into the university to end where it began.

Residents and townspeople are invited to gather on the north side of Western Avenue to watch the parade, White said. They are asked to walk to the parade site since parking is limited. Parking is available in the university’s Dutch Quad parking lot, said White. The parade will be followed by a picnic with bouncy houses and other activities for children, he said.

Department members will attend a dinner the night before the parade.

Guilderland Center

The Guilderland Center department is struggling to keep up membership, just like other volunteer departments, said Burton Frederick, a commissioner of the Guilderland Center Fire District and a director of the Guilderland Center Fire Department.

You can always use members,” he said, estimating Guilderland Center’s at about 35 to 40.

People join, he said, but then often find that, “for one reason for another, because of schooling or family responsibilities, they can’t make the commitment.”

Frederick added, “The training that’s involved, it’s substantial.”

The Guilderland Center Fire Department is lucky to have had two firefighting volunteers recently complete their training — they will graduate on Monday. Of the training, Frederick said, “It’s a six-month ordeal.”

The fire department will take part in Guilderland Center’s observance of the statewide Path Through History Weekend, scheduled for Saturday, June 16, from 1 to 4 p.m., in which the Mynderse-Frederick house and its gardens will be open to the public, as will the Cobblestone Schoolhouse.

At the fire department, members will be on hand to show visitors the “Village Queen,” a firefighting apparatus — drawn by horses or behind a vehicle — that dates back to 1923. That year, Frederick said, there were only seven of that particular apparatus produced anywhere in the world.

According to Guilderland Historical Society President Mary Ellen Johnson (see related letter to the editor), the Village Queen was the first piece of equipment in Guilderland capable of pumping streams of water two or three stories high, and it was instrumental in fighting several major fires.

An Enterprise article from July 11, 1958 says that the Village Queen was used to fight large fires including at the Charles Hurst feed mill, Dugan’s hotel, the Altamont feed mill, the Altamont hotel, and the Army Depot.