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In a dark and dingy basement, Bill Goforth, a Portland Fire & Rescue captain, walked into the middle of a rubble-filled room and pointed to the charred walls.

“They would light this place up,” he said. “They had mazes down here and when it gets really dark, to try and find your way out is just impossible.”

Few Portland buildings have as active a past as the fire department’s Station 23 drill tower. The narrow, six-story structure stands out like a beacon amid a block of one and two-story buildings at the corner of Southeast Powell Boulevard and Milwaukie Avenue.

Built in 1936 and ’37, the structure formerly served as training grounds for new firefighters. Controlled fires were set, and then rookies were sent in to extinguish them. The last fire was lit in the early 1990s because walls became too weak; however, the building still hosts some training exercises.

Lieutenant Stew White, a senior inspector and training coordinator for Portland Fire & Rescue, remembers donning his firefighting equipment (mask, air tanks and suit) and repeatedly climbing a ladder to the tower’s roof before running back down the stairwell to the ground floor.

“That was our morning warm-up – our daily training,” White said.

Also, new firefighters used to go through a rite of passage of sorts by jumping from the building’s second story onto a 10-foot-diameter safety net – like those often pictured in old cartoons – held by fellow firefighters just 8 feet from the ground. White said it was a relatively small target.

“You just hoped,” White said with a laugh when asked whether he worried about hitting the net. “But to know it was something you could use in a pinch … If it was hot and coming at you, it was better than the asphalt.”

Several decades ago, crews used the tower to test their gear. Their helmets would bubble and melt when training fires got too hot. Firefighters would swing pompier (single-beam) ladders above their heads into windows above, and hook onto sills before climbing up.

“They don’t do that anymore obviously,” Goforth said. “It’s dangerous for one, and there’s no need when they can walk the stairs.”

The tower’s future isn’t certain. It’s not seismically sound, and its blackened and broken innards would require a substantial amount of work before reuse would be feasible.

Also, TriMet is building the Portland-Milwaukie light-rail line slightly north of the site, and is in exclusive negotiations with Reworks Inc. for an 11,000-square-foot redevelopment on TriMet-owned property directly across from the tower on the north side of Southeast Gideon Street. Mary Fetsch, chief media relations officer for TriMet, said development would not touch any city-owned or private properties south of Gideon Street. The agency hopes to have a development agreement with Reworks by August.

Goforth hopes the drill tower can be preserved. His father also was a firefighter who trained in the building.

“This is a lot of history for us,” he said.

Block by Block is a weekly look at commercial real estate around Portland. Send suggestions for properties to [email protected].