In 1977, the City created a new agency to manage its water supply and wastewater treatment and to regulate air quality, noise, and hazardous materials: the Department of Environmental Protection. DEP inherited the infrastructure, responsibilities, and documentation of many predecessor agencies dating back to the 1840s. That documentation comprises the bulk of the DEP archives and is still used in planning capital construction and rehabilitation projects, as well as watershed land management, facilities maintenance, and other operations.

Fire Engine Company No. 7/Hook & Ladder Company No. 1 ARCHITECT: Trowbridge & Livingston DATE: 1904-05 STYLE: Beaux-Arts Firehouse was designed in the Beaux-Arts style–or what at the time was described as the “modern French” style. Its three-bay width was dictated by the two-bay requirement of an enlarged engine company and a third bay for a separate hook & ladder company. The architects created a facade remarkable for its symmetry and emphatic horizontality. It is visually unified by superimposed architectural elements drawn from early seventeenth-century French civic architecture: the boldly rusticated Indiana limestone ground story, the brick and raised limestone bands of the upper stories, the entablature and parapet.