The volunteer fire company that served Windsor center was formed in 1830 by twenty men who each subscribed five dollars. Their early apparatus and a storage building were destroyed by a disastrous fire in 1869 that burned more than a dozen large buildings in the center of town. The group then acquired a small pumping engine which the firefighters dragged to fires themselves and worked by hand. At the end of the 19th century the group was reorganized and revitalized. They purchased a horse-drawn 70-gallon chemical fire engine in 1902, took receipt of a motor-driven truck in 1918. And in 1926 they bought a new Seagrave 750 gallon-per-minute pumper. The new apparatus did not fit in the old building near Maple Avenue, so this new brick building on Union Street was built in 1927. It served as the Windsor Fire Company’s headquarters until they moved in 1964 to the Public Safety Complex on Bloomfield Avenue, a location that provides quick access to all parts of town.
The Union Street Tavern restaurant opened in 2006. On their first anniversary in 2007 the owners initiated the Tavern Trot, a 3.5 mile race which raises thousands of dollars for charity every year. Copyright 2015 Windsor Historical Society.