It is easier for horses and cattle to go up hill, or stairs, than down but they can both go both ways. As a matter of fact I’ll bet most bad falls on stairs by people happen when they are going down and not up, but we can go both ways.
From this site…http://www.fire.ci.burlington.vt.us/stations.html
Go to Fire Station 3
The living quarters for the firefighters were upstairs. There was a large common bunk room in the center of the building, with a kitchen and day room in the front, and a hay loft in the rear. A beautiful spiral wooden staircase leads to the second floor, and survives to this day. Firehouses of this period commonly had spiral staircases, because the bond between the firefighters and their horses was such that the horses would try to wander upstairs with the men. The hay loft remains much as it did in 1895. There is still the large door on the southern wall where bales of hay were once brought in. There is still a trap door in the floor, through which the firefighters of yesteryear would toss the hay bales.?
From this site…Fire station stairs - Everything2.com
In interesting factoid is that older fire stations in the United States always have spiral staircases. The reason for this is that when fire stations were first built many fire trucks were still horse-driven. Since horses were stabled on the ground floor all perishable material had to be kept on the first floor, originally standard stairs were used but horses managed to climb them. For this reason spiral staircases were implemented; it is very difficult to get a horse to climb a spiral staircase, and when they are on their own, generally they can’t be bothered to try. It’s possible that one of the reasons for the pole is that horses would occasionally try to climb up and get stuck.
I lost this site, but here’s the passage…
Speaking of stairs, firehouses began using circular stairways back in the day when fire engines were pulled by horses. With straight stairways the horses would travel upwards rather than staying in their downstairs quarters, making it necessary to run the horses back down stairs before leaving to tend to the fire. With spiral staircases the horses would stay put.
Here’s the 3rd one…http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/9236/did_you_know_trivial_facts_of_interest.html
You are joking, right ltfire? You aren’t really trying to use pages that repeat a factoid to verify that factoid?
I’m sure you must be joking because nobody on the Straight Dope you would dare post multiple pages that repeat glurge factoids that have been thoroughly debunked by both Snopes and The Straight Dope… unless they were joking, right?.
As I said, you really should put a smiley at the end of these joke posts. It’s hard to tell that you are joking.
The idea that fire stations had spiral staircases to prevent horse movement simply makes no sense. The fact that it is found only on pages that are wont to repeat “Wendy originated in Peter Pan” and similar factoids simply confirms its UL status.
Horses are big, dangerous animals. If they must be kept inside they are always stalled so they can’t kick people, won’t fight with one another, don;t re-carpet the floor and can be readily caught when they are required. The idea that the ground floors of fire stations, which were also public access points, had numerous horses wandering around freely, fighting, kicking passers by and shitting all over the floor makes no sense in any way whatsoever. What possible explanation could there be for such an arrangement at fire stations when cavalry stables, coach houses and other equine establishments invariably stalled their horses?
I just did a quick Google search, and every single historical fire station I can find information to had horse stalls. Fairly typical is
There are literally thousands of similar references for historical fire houses, all illustrating that horses were, sensibly, stalled.
Even in those fire stations with spiral staircases the horses were stalled.
I can’t find a single historical reference to a fire station having free-wandering livestock on the ground floor.
So if all fire stations kept their horses in stalls why excatly would they need to use spiral staircases to conatin horses? Why not just shut the stall door?
Over the weekend I came across another myth where someone drove cattle backwards to try and hide the direction of theft – the myth of Hercules and Cacus":
Although the myth as given here says that he “dragged them backwards by the tails”, that makes no sense – it would leave lenty of marks. Surely the original suggested driving them backwards so as to disguise the direction of motion.
Oh well, then lets pick a nit.
You quote…’ This alerted the horses and the doors to their stalls automatically opened to let them out’.
Could they not have run up the stairs at this time of high stress?
I never said that’ fire stations had free wandering live stock on the ground floor’.
SAMCLEM asked for cites, and I supplied three, with four more I didn’t bother with.
I absorbed fire house lore for thirty five years, and I will admit that I had NEVER seen anything on a printed page about my comment, until I ran it by Google. I think that all my cites / sites were from legitimate sources.
You offered me SNOPES, and gave me a story about horses hoofs in the air or some such. SNOPES, as far as I’m concerned, IS a joke site. They have been called on numerous claims, and their content is strictly for laughs.
Here’s a smily for ya, but I’ll continue to believe that my post is true.
Until I can get a hold of a 125 year old firefighter who used to polish the brass on the spiral staircase in his fire house. He’ll give you the full cite…and a whole lot more you whippersnapper.
I’m with Blake here, but I’m the “good cop” in the team. 
You gave cites which were opinion pieces. That’s all. No references, no sources. This just won’t do.
You absorbed firehouse “lore?” I’ll say.
snopes (note the small “s”) is NOT a joke site. I guess you haven’t really spent time there to form more than a cursory opinion, which by the way, is wrong. They are pretty careful about what they post. They offer references. What claims have they been called on that were incorrect? (Again, not that they haven’t made a mistake or two, who hasn’t) but give me a specific or two.
I’ll try to find some more reliable cites than your Google hits to give some more factual information. I may find it tonight, maybe tomorrow, but I will supply it.
As I have access to an electronic database of historic newspapers, I read perhaps ten stories last night. They were from 1885-1910. From Montana to NY City. In each and every case, the horses were kept in locked stalls. Period. And in almost every case, when the fire gong sounded, the stalls were automatically unlocked allowing the horses to come out by themselves. They were so well trained that they went to their preassigned piece of equipment and waited for the firemen to come down from the floor above and hook up their collars to the engine and then they could leave for the fire. This scenario took place in the space of perhaps a minute or so, no more.
The best story that I read was about the NYC fire department. They had a centralized building where all the newly purchased horses were brought in and trained to be fire horses. Cost of a horse–$250. They rejected lots of horses which were untrainable and this usually only took 3-5 days to discover. A good fire horse learned to come out of his stall when the fire gong rang and proceed to go to his engine and stand waiting for be hitched up. Those that couldn’t learn this in a matter of 2 or so weeks were sent packing. And even after they weeded them to that point, the local fire house could come pick up a new horse and try it out for 30 days. If it didn’t do right, they brought it back. Then the main trainers would try to train the horse some more. If it still wasn’t perfect, then they were sold. Fascinating story.
I found it by searching for fire, horse, gong and it was in the Sunday, March 6, 1904 New York Times
Which leads to the further question. Did the stories say whenther or not the horses always had their harness on or were they harnessed at the time?
Almost certainly not. Leaving a harness on a horse all the time would lead to sores and make the horse unavailable for use for a while. Especially if the harnesses were left on after coming back from a fire, when they would be sooty & sweaty. No doubt the horses were washed down and put back into their stalls, and the harnesses were cleaned and hung back up.
Besides, an experienced teamster could put a harness onto a well-trained horse in under a minute.
Horses will certainly learn where ‘their’ place is, and go there on cue. My mother sold a driving pair to people in New York, who had some trouble with them at first. When they sent some pictures of the pair, Mom called them and told them they had the horses in the wrong place – they had switched the sides they were hitched on, and it was confusing these young horses.
As t-bonham nicely added, they were in the stall nekkid!
Firefighters could wake out of dead sleep, and almost literally jump into their pants which were quite often left tucked into/over their boots at the foot of the bed in twelve seconds. Then downstairst to their horses which were waiting to be hitched. And were out the door to a fire in about a minute. Quite impressive.
Well I actually knew the answer before I asked the question. I suspect they used the simplest possible harness in the interest of saving time.
It’s interesting to watch horses come into the stable. If a team is stalled together, as the usually are, they will walk in and take their proper place, each one on the same side as they are hitched. As you say, try hitching a team with sides exchanged if you want to see a lot of balking and refusal to work.
Horses tend to be finicky about everything.
Especially when you consider that they had to harness the horses. Maybe the had the harness overhead so it could be simply lowered onto the horse, with a little judicious guiding, and connected up.
I wonder if the horses were trained to raise their tails so the crupper could be put on with a minimum of time delay.
I may have overlooked, but why did firehouses have spiral staircases?
First you have to assume that a majority of them did. I’m not sure that’s true. Love to see some statistics.
I assume it was a style at the time. Another thought would be that trying to save room in a building design, you might choose a spiral staircase over one which took more space but flowed more gracefully. This might be especially important in big cities where space would be more at a premium as opposed to more rural towns.
To derail the discussion a bit further, I wonder whether the firehouses that had spiral stairs also have poles to slide down, and whether all (or most) firehouses had poles. It would intuitively make some sense to replace the space used by a single ‘normal’ stair with one pole and one spiral stair, but it might make it tricky to get anything bulky upstairs (mattresses, tables and the like).
Anyhow, I can’t imagine having heavy draught horses ambling up flights of wooden stairs would be that big a problem - they tend to be a bit chary of anything with a bit of wobble or give underfoot. Our pony once ended up in the living room with his head in the salad bowl, but they were solid stone steps and he was more than usually bonkers, even by pony standards. He did make a bit of a fuss about going down again, but that was because he wanted to stay for lunch more than anything…
To hold up their pants!
I am a little confused here. I saw a rescue programme once where people out riding in Jersey (CI) had been caught out by the tide and taken refuge on a tower - of which there are many littering the coast. They were then unable to get the horses down the steps to dry land the next day. The programme showed video footage of the eventual rescue, which involved using JCBs to cover the steps with sand making them into a gentle slope, which the animals were reluctantly led down.
Now I can’t be sure that the reason the horses got stuck wasn’t just fear, but certainly some thought that the steps were the difficulty, and that a ramp was the only answer.
These riders were just too stupid to know that their horses could indeed have gone down the steps.
Not a surprise, they were stupid enough to get caught by the tide (which isn’t exactly unexpected, after all).