We could think of him as Fort Worth’s first Fireman Bill.
William Eberhardt Bideker was born in Ohio in 1869. He came to Fort Worth in 1891 and got a job at the Texas & Pacific freight depot. Then County Clerk (and future candyman) John P. King helped him get a job on the police force. Bill Bideker was assigned to one of the most dangerous beats in town—Hell’s Half Acre.
He resigned from the police force in 1893 and joined the fire department as the city was converting from volunteer firefighters to paid professionals. He was captain of the city’s first aerial truck company.
In 1901 Bideker was appointed assistant fire chief under Chief James Maddox.
The fire department had been horse-driven since its inception in 1873. It remained horse-driven in the new century. In 1902 after the 1899 central fire station took delivery of a new hose wagon, the Telegram wrote that Bill Bideker declared the new wagon to be “a great improvement over any other in the department.”
In 1905 Bideker was promoted to fire chief, replacing James Maddox.
Fast-forward four years. The fire department was still horse-driven. Bideker was bruised when the horse pulling his “fire buggy” became frightened and overturned the buggy.
Bideker remained a staunch champion of the horse. Nonetheless, the world was changing. When the central fire station added a Maxwell automobile to its rolling stock in 1909 Bideker quickly recognized the advantages of motorized vehicles. The new Maxwell, outfitted with chemical fire extinguishers, axes, lanterns, and a siren, was capable of fifty miles per hour.
After racing to five fires in the Maxwell, Bideker said, “Time is the important thing in firefighting, and the fire departments the country over work constantly to eliminate time as far as possible. I went to a fire the other day and arrived in half the time it took the wagons. I had time to look over the situation and was ready to give the right orders the second the hose wagon arrived. The saving in time is a tremendous advantage.”
Bideker predicted that motorized vehicles were the future of firefighting.
But the evolution from horse to horsepower would come slowly. In the meantime, William Bideker was a firefighter during the era of wooden buildings and wood/coal heating. Five of Fort Worth’s most sensational fires of the early twentieth century occurred during his tenure as assistant chief or chief:
In 1904 the Fifth Ward school and Missouri Avenue Methodist Church were destroyed by fire.
Later that year the 1899 Texas & Pacific passenger depot was heavily damaged by fire.
Fort Worth’s roving photographer Charles Swartz took this photograph of the fire. The Al Hayne memorial can be seen in the left foreground. Behind the memorial is the Joseph H. Brown building. (Photo from University of Texas at Arlington Library.)
In 1908 the T&P freight depot was destroyed by fire.
Note the headline “Bideker to Quit as Chief.” The city required its fire chief to be “on call” and to live in an apartment in the central fire station. Bideker was unhappy with that arrangement, wanted to live with his wife and five daughters at their home at 501 South Jennings on the near South Side. He also said he wanted to run for the position of city tax assessor and collector.
Bideker retained his job as fire chief and, as far as I can determine, continued to live at the central fire station, although he occasionally went home to eat meals.
In 1909 thirty-two blocks of the near South Side were destroyed by fire.
Firefighters later praised Bideker for his supervision of efforts to contain a fire of such unprecedented scope.
The fire hit close to home—literally—for Bideker. In 1909 the Star-Telegram said the fire began at the intersection of Peter Smith and St. Louis streets—two blocks from the Bideker home on South Jennings Avenue at Tucker Street. The fire began on the afternoon of April 3—a Saturday. Many people were in their homes. Imagine what Bideker thought as the first alarms came in to the central fire station and he saw smoke rising less than a mile to the south—where his wife and five daughters were.
But the fire spread east, away from the Bideker home.
(Ten years later the Star-Telegram would report that the fire of 1909 had begun “directly across the street” from the Bideker home!)
The 1910 census shows that the Bideker home at 501 South Jennings Avenue survived the fire.
The South Side fire of 1909 had spared Fort Worth High School, located on South Jennings Avenue three blocks north of the Bideker home. The fire passed within a block of the school.
Twenty months later the high school was destroyed by fire. Two of Bideker’s daughters were thirteen and fifteen years old and probably attended Fort Worth High School.
In 1910 Bideker was among the incorporators of Polytechnic Heights Investment Company, which developed the Englewood Heights addition in Poly.
Bideker and other incorporators of the addition have streets named after them: Burton, Hanger, Forbes, Thannisch, Crenshaw, Littlejohn, Bideker, Fitzhugh. Bideker Street runs from U.S. 287 east to Bishop Street.
In 1912 Bideker led the effort to save Frank Peter Keniff after a brick wall collapsed on him as volunteer Keniff and Bideker’s fire department fought a fire at the Fort Worth Furniture Company factory.
In 1918 Bideker ran the big bell of the central fire station for thirty minutes to celebrate the end of World War I.
In 1919 Bideker finally did resign, disagreeing with the city commission over enforcement of the building code.
The man who had fought fire for a quarter-century would spend the rest of his life selling fire insurance.
After his resignation Bideker remained in touch with Fort Worth firefighters and often dropped in at the central station to talk or play dominoes. Beginning in April 1931 Bideker had to get used to going to a new central fire station, designed by the firm of Wyatt Hedrick.
Bideker was an outspoken advocate of water conservation. After efforts to contain the South Side fire of 1909 had overwhelmed the city’s water supply, the city had begun planning to impound a reservoir on the West Fork of the Trinity River to give Fort Worth a better water supply. Bideker was an advocate of the project.
Bideker later helped create Tarrant County Water Control and Improvement District No. 1 (Tarrant Regional Water District today) in 1924 to provide water conservation and flood control for the county.
He was one of the first directors of the district.
Also in 1924 he served on the commission that drafted the charter under which Fort Worth adopted a city manager form of government.
In 1938 William Eberhardt Bideker died in the house that had been spared in the South Side fire of 1909. The big fire bell that Bideker had rung in 1918 was rung for his funeral.
He was eulogized in an editorial in the Star-Telegram.
