Pia Peltola and Andy Singletary stand in front of the entrance to their home in the 1912 Fireman's Hall.  The entrance is a converted garage bay used originally for fire trucks.  Courtesy photo

Adaptive reuse has long been a way to preserve historic buildings and use them for today’s needs. In Shepherdstown, we have had many such projects, including the iconic Fireman’s Hall at the corner of New and King streets. Construction began in 1912, the same year of a massive fire in Shepherdstown that included the town center and a section of the Entler Hotel.

Andy Singletary and Pia Peltola creatively converted Fireman’s Hall into residential use after purchasing it at public auction in 1994. They became familiar with Shepherdstown when Singletary, as an architect with the Washington, D.C. firm Keyes Condon Florance, worked on several design projects at the National Conservation Training Center in the early to mid 1990s.

Their vision for a home in Shepherdstown was a building, after remaining empty for several years after the Shepherdstown Volunteer Fire Department relocated in 1989, in bad repair that could be creatively repurposed. They first addressed fundamental structural needs, including the slate roof, interior brick walls, wooden trusses, tin ceiling and dividing partitions to separate their residence from an adjoining residence developed by architect Donna McIntyre and her husband Ian Kessler; they moved a few years later with a succession of owners and renters in the intervening years including, for a short time, former Washington, D.C. mayor Anthony Williams.

Singletary and Peltola moved into their in progress residence around Thanksgiving 1995.

“We didn’t have much money at the time, so we lived with the project all around us and did a lot of the work ourselves. I became quite good at cleaning the tiles in the tin ceiling,” Peltola said.

While many think of the building as the longtime location of the fire department, it has served several purposes – as town offices, jail and multi-purpose community hall. The proscenium of the large stage in the hall can still be seen with the curvature of the tin ceiling. Pulleys for raising and lowering the stage curtain are visible among the wood trusses. The entrance was from King Street, which is now the entrance to the second residence.

“When I first checked out the building, there was a large backdrop of a painted bucolic fantasy landscape a la Thomas Hart Benton at the rear of the stage, but it was no longer there when we took possession,” Singletary said, mentioning that older town residents showed up while they were working on their new residence to talk about attending performances in the hall, some produced by touring companies.

Singletary described the removal of a concrete slab over Town Run, which flows just to the east. Fire trucks parked there and pumped water from Town Run into their trucks. He also removed a wooden shed roof, which had been constructed on the south side of the building for ambulances, and converted the space into an outdoor deck. One of Singletary’s most recent projects was to create a formal entrance on New Street into their residence, through the garage bay where the ceiling had been raised by the fire department to accommodate larger fire trucks. The result is striking, with a handsome wood and metal staircase that Singletary designed and which ascends into their living space.

The couple have lived both full-time and as weekenders in Shepherdstown over the years, as they continued to work in Washington, D.C. after the historic property’s purchase. Singletary left private architectural practice and began working at the State Department in 2011, working on embassy design projects. He retired last January. Peltola worked at the American Institute for Research in data collection for 16 years, but most recently with the National Institute for Educational Statistics, a federal agency created in1867 that was largely eliminated through the DOGE process last March – and with that, her job.

Now retired, they continue tackling projects, including creating a principal bedroom on the second level. Also on that level is a space to accommodate personal passions. Singletary is a landscape artist and Peltola a weaver — a craft she learned as a young person in her native Finland, often in public weaving stations. She recently secured a large weaving loom through a family connection in Finland, whom she met during a time that Singletary was living in Finland for his work. A Scandinavian influence is clear in the style of their soaring open loft style living space – from architectural features like the doors to the use of traditional Finnish wall hangings. Natural raw materials are highlighted throughout. The beautifully weathered copper outer wall of the main floor bathroom is an homage to the exterior of the Finnish embassy in Washington, D.C.

Fireman’s Hall has often been described as Gothic design, but Tom Mayes of the Historic Landmarks Commission points out that design style would require it to have pointed gables and windows. He describes it as Romanesque, because of its rounded arches, with a bit of Victorian vernacular in the brickwork. Andy Singletary and Pia Peltola have created within this iconic 1912 Romanesque structure a most unique interior, filled with their innate design instincts that respect the natural materials of the historic building and introduce new compatible architectural features.

Historic Shepherdstown’s annual holiday ornament features the image of Fireman’s

Hall this year. It may be purchased through them, at the Entler Museum or at the Shepherdstown Holiday Marketplace, in 129 East German Street.

Historic Shepherdstown board member Greg Coble wrote this column, with research and editorial assistance of fellow board members Marellen Aherne and Terry Fulton. Historic Shepherdstown is a nonprofit group dedicated to preserving Shepherdstown’s unique architectural character and building public understanding of the town’s distinctive history through its museum and other programs. Become a member at https://historicshepherdstown.com.