trams outside the Melbourne fire station at Gisborne St/Victoria Parade, 1900s

With its lookout tower; presumably if the watchman saw smoke rising somewhere, a fire appliance was dispatched.

The tower is still there.  Info from the Walking Melbourne website:

"The Eastern Hill Fire Station is a two storey brick building with accompanying watch tower built on an elevated with a wide panorama of the City. Architectural firms Tayler & Fitts, and Smith & Johnston designed the fire station in collaboration as a merger of two competition winning designs. Thomas Cockram & Co. constructed the building at a cost of nearly £16,000. The fire station was opened in 1893 as the headquarters station for the newly established Metropolitan Fire Brigades Board. Residential and workshop extensions, made to the rear of the building in the 1920s were replaced by a new head station building in 1978, and in later years the west wing of the original building was demolished. The Eastern Hill Fire Station displays some traces of the Queen Anne revival style that was popular in Britain in the 1870s and 1880s. The contrasting materials of red brick and cement, the use of parapeted gables with flanking scrolls, the steeply pitched roof and tall chimneys all contribute to this style. The building remains essentially a composition in the classical style, combining arcuation and trabeation. The Eastern Hill Fire Station is composed of two two-storey arcades flanking a central pavilion. The ground floor arcade is raised on a bluestone plinth. The upper storey arcade has depressed arches. The tower, with a cast iron and glass lookout and a projecting lower balcony is 150 ft [46 metres] high. It was served by a direct-current electrical lift. The towers style, with arched openings and niches, is reminiscent of Italian Romanesque campaniles."

Pics from cable tram days.