"In the fall of 1975, Williamsburg-Greenpoint residents faced plans to eliminate schools, libraries, police stations, fire stations, bus lines, and hospitals. Angry about the planned cuts, as well as about noise and pollution from the expressway and leaking sewers at the derelict Brooklyn Navy Yard, residents conducted a series of dramatic protests. Encouraged by [Mobilization for Youth (MFY) social worker Jan] Peterson, Northside residents mobilized a long-term campaign to save their local firehouse, No. 212, which the city planned to close in November 1975 when it reduced its firefighting force by 900…With the aid of the local firefighters, residents organized an eighteen-month-long civil disobedience campaign designed to keep the firehouse open. On Thanksgiving Day 1975, when fire commissioner John T. O’Hagan sent a crew of twenty-four to remove Engine 212, more than 200 residents occupied the station, holding the engine and the firemen hostage. The next day, after negotiations with O’Hagan, the residents set the firemen free but continued to occupy the firehouse, which they renamed People’s Firehouse No. 1."

For more on this story, check out this excerpt from Tamar Carroll's Mobilizing New York in Gotham: A Blog for Scholars of New York City History.