Old firehouse: venue for local eatery, offers rich history

The building occupied by Buffalo Wild Wings in the University of Minnesota’s Stadium Village has a rich history: It was first a fire station – built in 1893 – and two years later was the workplace of the man who invented softball.  

Today, the two-level restaurant is a challenge for the Buffalo Wild Wings staff. The eatery is the only multi-story Wild Wings in Minnesota, creating a labor and fitness challenge for the staff.  

Darrel LeBarron, owner of Station 19 Architects, bought Station 19 in 1977 after the fire department moved out the year before. The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1982, according to federal records. 

Buffalo Wild Wings bought the main level space in 2010, though the station has housed multiple restaurants since 1977.  

Significant growth in Minneapolis during the 1880’s and a large fire in 1892 caused people living and working on the Mississippi River’s East Bank to ask for a new fire station. 

A year later, Fire Station 19 was constructed on the corner of Oak Street and University Avenue with a utilitarian design and elegant ornamentation, such as romanesque window arches. Aside from a bell tower that was removed several years after construction, the building’s exterior remains mostly unchanged.

A plaque in the restaurant claims that a popular American sport – softball – had its origins there. In 1895, Lt. Lewis Rober was working at another station when he introduced a variant of baseball that used a larger ball and smaller diamond to his fire crew to play during down time. The new game eventually led to summer competitions between his station and others. 

In Fall of that year, Rober was transferred to Station 19 and started a team.

Playing in a vacant lot, Station 19 began playing games and within a few years, workers and businesses throughout Minneapolis developed their own teams. By 1906, Rober offered rules for the game that eventually established standards for softball.

The station also was one of the last to update from its horse-drawn equipment to being fully motorized, using horses until 1922.

Mason Boelter, 29, the general manager at Buffalo Wild Wings, said running a restaurant in an old fire station has unique challenges beyond stair climbing, but his staff has been able to adapt to the structure. 

“There’s some extra leaks and there’s some extra love to it,” he said. “These are the same doors the fire trucks would come out and they would open up horizontally. That’s our patio doors now.”