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 This 1930 New Yorker magazine article explains the history of the Cairns and Brothers Helmets.
The Eagle on the Helmet |
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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.
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The New Yorker June 14, 1930 |
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.
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