Cold Spring Fire Chief Puts His Stamp on New Fire Hall With Maltese Cross Etching

(KNSI) – The first thing a visitor to the new Cold Spring Fire Hall will notice is the granite exterior gleaming in the fall sun.

On second look, they might notice the southeast corner of the building, which is designed to make an impression on those passing by along Main Street. A foyer holds Cold Spring Fire’s first apparatus from about 1910. The equipment was built to be pulled by horse-drawn wagon, as it predates the widespread adoption of the automobile in rural Stearns County.

On the outside is a dark tile bearing the Maltese Cross and the official CSFD logo, which was hand-created by Fire Chief Dan Weber. “There’s white…is the highlight paint that goes on it. The different colored sand that we use gets the different tones to it. It’s all one piece of granite, and then just the different things that we do at Cold Spring Granite.”

The piece is personal for Weber, who has been on the Cold Spring Fire Department for decades now. He volunteered to make it. “When we were going through the architect part of it, I told the architects, we’re going to put a Maltese cross up, and with me working at Cold Spring Granite, it’s Cold Spring now, but in my years, it was Cold Spring Granite, but that I would be doing that. And, so, they let me do it, and with work there, and got her done.”

Weber spent over four decades at Cold Spring working with the stone as a career. The cross took him about two weeks to complete. Weber used a combination of a CNC program to create the outline. He then hand-etched details of the fire hydrant, helmet, and other elements within the tile. You’ll also see the number 208 along the left side. It is the official department number as assigned by the state.

Weber says it is all local, sourced by Cold Spring, which made the use of granite a condition of selling the land to the city to build the facility.

Weber lists where everything comes from. “The white granite is from Rockville, Minnesota. The black granite is from St. Cloud. And the Maltese Cross is from Mesabi, which we have a quarry up in northern Minnesota.”

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