Reclamation can produce some strange outcomes in Ypsilanti's Depot Town, a neighborhood where every other building, it seems, was built for a different purpose than it now serves. The senior citizens apartment building that used to be the high school. The clandestine sculpting studio that used to be Ypsilanti's first City Hall.

A walk through the neighborhood invites thoughts of what might have been. But one need not imagine what the glory days might have been at the Michigan Firehouse Museum at 110 W. Cross, one need only step inside the repurposed former firehouse and take a look around.

The Michigan Firehouse Museum in Ypsilanti.

Angela J. Cesere | AnnArbor.com

The Michigan Firehouse Museum was founded by Howard and Norma Weaver. Norma's father, Henry W. Clements, was the only Ann Arbor firefighter to die in the line of duty, of a heart attack, on his way to the University Hospital to fight a fire in November 1961. That fire turned out to be a false alarm.

The Weavers purchased Ypsilanti's 1898 firehouse more than more than a century after it was built, in 1999. It opened in its current, multilevel, 26,000-square-foot form in 2002.

The main hall of the museum is a sprawling space featuring a number of fire trucks, hats, ladders, fire bells and extinguishers and their evolution throughout history.

Everything, except the toys that line the museum's gift shop on the front aisle, was placed in the museum to foster appreciation for the men and women who risk their lives to fight fire, and to educate the public on what they can do to prevent fires, said owner Howard Weaver.

Weaver bought his first vintage fire truck, a 100-footer, when he was visiting a truck show in Lansing with a friend almost two decades ago. Still a self-described "car guy" at age 80, Weaver recalls that after he bought his first fire truck, it wasn't long before he owned several.

The Weavers were looking to create a firehouse museum and thought themselves fortunate when the old Ypsilanti firehouse, which operated from 1898 to 1974 before falling into private ownership, came available. After three years of negotiations in the mid-to-late 90s, the Weavers purchased the old firehouse and the house next to it.

They did the controlled burn because the city wouldn't let them just demolish the neighboring home. Weaver described it as a win-win-win for all parties: The Weavers got to expand their museum, Ypsilanti firefighters got to log practice controlling the controlled burn, and by now the four apartments they've built onto the back of the building are producing more tax revenue for the city than the old home was.

Inside the museum, fire safety is as much a focus as fire history.

The Hazard House schematic, featuring Spanky the Fire Dog, reveals a neighborhood, broken up into individual sections, with precarious safety and fire safety situations in each section: The weed-whacking young man wearing sandals when he should be wearing boots, children crossing against the light, a distracted driver and, for good measure, an unsupervised baby falling out of a third-story window. Children are to point out the safety shortfalls in the section in front of them, and adults are to explain the ones that the kids can't. The Wall of Teachable Moments, it could be called.

The museum sports an extensive collection of vintage fire bells.

Angela J. Cesere | AnnArbor.com

The fun continues upstairs, where 7 of the 20 glass display cases feature toys and print-ads featuring the most famous fire-prevention spokesfigure in history, Smokey Bear.

But aside from Smokey's one-line admonition that "only you can prevent forest fires," the museum leaves the real hard work of fire prevention education to Hazard House and Spanky the Fire Dog.

At the end of the hallway, upstairs, is the fire bunk, a mock-up of the small room firemen sleep in on-duty, between calls. This room contains probably the single most inquired-about item in the entire museum, the brass fire pole.

While the museum prides itself on its hands-on, interactive nature, owner Howard Weaver told AnnArbor.com that the brass pole has only been used once since he's owned the place.

"We had to draw the line (at people sliding down the brass pole)," Howard said. "The guy who owned the building before we did let one of his friends slide down it, then the guy gets hurt and sues his buddy."

At an early event, the museum found itself host to a 98-year-old retired fireman. With plenty of young firefighters there to help him, he was allowed to slide down the pole one last time.

But even the brass pole is becoming a relic of history, the museum notes. Amid cost and safety concerns some fire departments are moving away from the brass poles and in favor of a more ranch-style setup, that or simply having firefighters take the stairs. As a 2008 piece in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer asked and answered, in the course of explaining the recent trend: What's a fire station without a fire pole? $150,000 cheaper.