GARDINER — No trolls guard the Gardiner fire station.
But the mark of the troll king, who lives down the road, is upon it.
“He’s had his hand in it for quite a bit,” said Ben Cooper.
Cooper is chief of the Gardiner-Discovery Bay Fire Department, whose main station is a mile down the road from Gary Bandy’s Troll Haven, a collection of barns and buildings that resembles an illustration from Grimm’s Fairy Tales.
Complete with a fairy-tale castle guarded by 12-foot high wooden trolls, the property has become a popular drive-by destination for tourists.
But the equally archaic fire station, built with Bandy’s help, also gets its share of attention, especially when the vintage fire engine he restored and donated to the department is parked out front.
“People come all the way up the driveway to take pictures of it,” Cooper said.
The 1927 engine, red with gold-flake trim and script, looks right at home at the station, built on a half-acre of land Bandy donated in 1986.
The philanthropist also paid for his architect to design the building in traditional firehouse style, and paid for the construction of the upper floor — including the decorative trim on the gutters, the row of dormer windows and the 35-foot high central tower.
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The rest of the story appears in Tuesday’s Peninsula Daily News.
