Firefighter museum looking for a new home

July 30, 2007 (WLS) -- The Chicago Fire Department dates back to the 1850s. It's a history filled with incredible tragedies like the Great Chicago , the Iroquois Theatre fire, and the deadly fire at Our Lady of Angels School. Despite its history, there's never been an official fire department museum, but there is an unofficial fire museum put together by volunteers.

St. Gabriels Grade School at 45th and Wallace is an unlikely place for a fire department museum, but up on the third floor is Chicago's one and only collection of artifacts from a long history of battling the blazes that scorched our city's past.

"It comes from firemen, firemen collected it. From fire fans, ah different collectors, ah and alot of items from the fire department itself also which is very interested in preserving our history. HOW FAR DOES THIS STUFF GO BACK? We have items back to the 1850's," said Frank McMenamin, V.P. Fire Museum of Greater Chicago.

For 10 years former firefighter Frank McMenamin and others have been putting this museum together. In most large cities the fire museums are sponsored by the city, but here the city has not chipped in.

"This is all volunteers, ah, we have a board of 15 people and dues paying membership of almost a thousand. It's all done by volunteers," said McMenamin.

There is a model of the tragic Our Lady of Angels fire in 1958, a fire that killed 95 school children and three nuns. And perhaps the most unusual item is an 11 foot statue of Christopher Columbus from 1893.

"At the Columbian Exposition of 1893 there was a large fire in the ice house there and they lost 11 firemen, fair firemen and Chicago firemen," said McMenamin.

Untold thousands of volunteer hours have gone into putting this collection together and it is truly a fabulous collection. But now there's a problem. St. Gabriel's is reclaiming this space and the museum has to move.

"All the things you see here, yes, we have to move," said McMenamin.

And unfortunately, so far, they don't have a new home and will probably have to move out of here by September.

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