The fire department was organized in 1923 by a group of Bedford Village residents, including John Kinkel and George McCabe, Sr. The department's single fire truck was housed in a garage behind Mrs. Colgate's house on the Village Green.

2018 marked the Bedford Fire Department's 95th Anniversay as an all-volunteer community agency.

The firehouse at 34 Village Green was completed in 1929 and has been an integral part of the Bedford Village Historic District and the "skyline" of the Village Green for 90 years. The land the firehouse sits on was sold to us for $1 by Katherine G. Kinkel. The original firehouse was 3,000 square feet of space on 2 levels.

In the 1930's the members of the Department procured some bowling alleys that had been built for a trade expo in the city and installed them behind the firehouse with a basic shed roof and walls to protect them from the elements.

A firehouse renovation and expansion was completed 3 decades later, in 1959. The addition, to the rear of the original building, added another 8,000 square feet and created a partial basement, as the lot slopes down from the front. At that time the small garage doors and the center pedestrian entry were combined to make one garage-style apparatus door to accommodate the larger trucks that came with the development of the fire service industry. A staircase to the second floor in the center of the apparatus floor was also removed to accommodate trucks. Reclaimed pin machines from a demolition site were installed in the front half of the basement, where some of the ceiling is too low for operations, to complete the bowling alley.

The basement level also has a boiler room, single-stall rest room, and generator room. The addition also included a 3-story rear staircase for access to all levels, a men's restroom and locker room with 2 showers, a radio room, a ladies' room in the upstairs public area, and expanded the kitchen. Another door and staircase were added to the side of the firehouse next to the library for pedestrian entrance from the front of the building to the 1st and 2nd floors.

On the historic facade of the firehouse at 34 Village Green, be sure to look closely at the shutters on the second floor: the rose cut-outs are actually fire axes!