Top: Firefighter Sam
Proffitt outside the
Wrightsville Beach
fire station at 3
Bob Sawyer Drive.
Lower left: Station
10 at 6102 Oleander
Drive. Lower right:
Station 15 at 3335
Masonboro Loop
Road.
41
At Wrightsville Beach, the fire station is part of the town’s
police/fire complex completed in 2010. The proximity to the
ocean informed the design decisions made by Stewart Cooper
Newell Architects, a Gastonia-based firm that specializes in fire
stations.
The coastal climate and potential for severe weather required
the main floor to be built on 20-foot high piers. The apparatus
bays are on ground level, constructed in breakaway pods to pre-vent
catastrophic damage in a storm surge.
The exterior is gray cedar, not red brick. The building materi-als
are not only suited to the climate, they also fit in with the
character of the beach town. Coastal Carolina influences are seen
in the wrap-around porch and roof overhangs.
“I think it fits in well down there, what it looks like,” says
Blackley, who began his career in Wilmington in 1985, moved
to Wrightsville Beach for 10 years, then returned to Wilmington
in 1999. “It looks like it would be on a beach, which goes back
to that idea of designing it to fit in where it is.”
www.wrightsvillebeachmagazine.com WBM