Thorndon Fire Station (Former) was designed by the architectural firm of Clere and Fitzgerald and was built in 1898 as a single-storey school and kindergarten. Known as Pipitea Private School, it was run by Miss Esther Baber and Miss Beatrice Richmond, who had both taught at Mrs Swainson’s school where architect Frederick de Jersey Clere’s daughter had been a pupil. The school was located on the corner of Murphy and Pipitea Streets in the Wellington central suburb of Thorndon. The building had a pitched roof and shingled gable, with vents along the ridgeline, small gables topped by a finial over the sash windows, and hoods over the paired double-sash windows on Murphy Street and over the entrance on Pipitea Street.

The school building was converted to a fire station and a second storey of living accommodation was added by the builder T J Townshend before it opened in about 1909/1910. Other changes were needed to the ground floor, including adding the large fire truck access door. The two-storeyed timber building is clad in rusticated weatherboards and has a bay form with a wing coming forward on the left side. It has double-hung sash windows and on the ground floor the windows have shaped tops and on the front a flared hood forming a shelter above them. The roof is low-pitched and hipped, and is sheathed in corrugated iron.

The fire station was owned by the Wellington City Council until 1931 when it was sold to the Wellington Fire Board. After a fire in 1950 it was renovated but no major alterations appear to have occurred until the 1990s. However, a comparison of photographs taken in 1919 and 1985 shows the front double sash windows have been lowered at some time (the windows were initially deliberately high so the school pupils would not be distracted by the view to the street). Inside, a staircase to the upper floor was located on the left.

The fire station moved to a new building on Thorndon Quay in 1992 and in 1994 the former fire station building was moved across the road to make way for an office and apartment complex on the Murphy and Pipitea Street corner site. In 1995 the former fire station building was converted into apartments, necessitating removal of the fire station door among other changes (a two-storey verandah has also been added, filling the recess on the right side). It is now known as the Fire Station Apartments.

The former Thorndon Fire Station is the oldest surviving fire station in Wellington. Although it no longer serves as a fire station, various elements of the original fire station (and probably of the school) are still evident, such as the windows and window hoods. The building’s history illustrates the adaptability of timber buildings, in this case from a single storey school, to two storey fire station and now apartments. Thorndon Fire Station (Former) has historic, social and architectural significance.