May 2, 2006
Greenpoint Warehouse on Fire
A five-alarm fire at the abandoned Greenpoint Terminal Warehouse/Market is being fought this morning in dramatic fashion: News choppers show that the FDNY's marine units are at work - the warehouse occupie a 200' by 600' lot along the East River. (WNBC's Vivian Lee, on location, said the fire was making it feel like a 100 degree day even 50 yards away.) Last year, Tien visited the terminal market last year and found a description of it from the Greenpoint-Williamsburg Environmental Impact Study:
The Greenpoint Terminal Market site occupies over three blocks of land along the East River between Greenpoint Avenue and Oak Street. This site, which is largely vacant, includes six industrial buildings ranging in height from one to seven stories, several of which are severely deteriorated. Immediately south of the Greenpoint Terminal Market is a now vacant piece of land formerly occupied by Consolidated Freight, a national freight forwarding company that declared bankruptcy in August 2002.Also, the U.S.S. Monitor was built there when Continental Ironworks was located there. The warehouse's vastness made it seem ripe for a conversion of some sort (commercial-residential, perhaps) - see pictures from Flickr of its cool skyways.
Can any of you on the East Side see the fire?
UPDATE: We went over to check out the fire and can confirm that the fire was very, very hot from about two blocks away. It seemed like the FDNY was just trying to contain the fire in the current area and not let is spread to the surrounding buildings. We spoke to a couple people on the scene who were rather suspicious of the fire's origins. One person we spoke to, who has been inside before, said the interior is mainly wood, with lots of junk - including some antique fire fighting gear. As we were leaving the scene, parts of the southern wall were collapsing, shooting flames even higher into the air. It was easily the biggest fire we've ever seen.
Our full Flickr set from the fire. Additional photos on Flickr from Steph Goralnick and from from Randy Plemel.
Photograph on top left from WNBC; photograph on top right as well as updates from Tien Mao
UPDATE: here are a few more from GrubbyKid.
UPDATE: we also received reports of another fire at Kent and N7th, which is about ten blocks away, but it doesn't appear to be related. Latest news says it has been knocked down by firefighters.
UPDATE:: After a commenter left a note about developer Josh Guttman owning the Terminal Market, we took to finding out a little information. Guttman was the owner of a DUMBO property, which he transferred to a Limited Liability Company as 225 Water Street Associates LLC in 1995. A fire at that location in 2004 raised suspicions, which Guttman did not address when contacted by the Village Voice in 2004. Gothamist found that, like the properties on Water Street in DUMBO, the properties surrounding the area of the fire are not under Guttman's name for ownership. However, in a 2002 meeting in Greenpoint, Guttman expressed an interest in developing housing for the Greenpoint Terminal Market site. Additionally, we found that several of the buildings between West Street and the river (including the northwest and southwest corner of Noble and West) are already set up as LLC's with a common lawyer - Joseph Kosofsky of White Plains. Coincidentally, or not, a Joe K filed satisfaction of mortgage papers for the 255 Water St. property where Guttman was listed as the borrower.
Update: Firefighters are still working on putting out the now nine-alarm fire. The AP has an article with this tidbit:
Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta called it the largest fire in the city in more than a decade, excluding the World Trade Center attack, and said the cause was suspicious.NY1 says there's a lumberyard and furniture company in the area.
Update: The fire has been burning for since 5:30AM, and ten hours later, it gets its tenth alarm.
Update: at 5:45pm, the fire is still going strong, and isn't under control. We biked down to Greenpoint, and West Street was completely blocked off-- the closest we could get was Franklin. The fire appeared to be concentrated mainly in the south building near Oak Street, and the ruins of that building were still smoldering. The northern buildings and skybridges are still standing, but it was impossible to tell how much those buildings were damaged. Lots of police and neighborhood people standing around talking about the fire.
Afterwards, we biked back into Manhattan and took a picture from 16th Street and the FDR. Check it out:
Mihow also went back and got some great neighborhood reaction shots, and a couple of pix of the sunset.
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i just came from central park and from the northwest corner of the reservoir i could see the smoke from the fire. it didn't look as far away as greenpoint.
Gigantic flames from the FDR about 7:40 this morning. Dark smoke clouds across the east side of Houston.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/98401138@N00/139045377/
You can see the smoke from Hoboken.
I could see it all the way from Ditmars this morning.
The smoke is very impressive from the GWB.
would that be "asian reporter vivian lee"?
I could see the smoke as I was getting on the Staten Island Ferry this morning.
Did anyone see the Jersey brush fire on Saturday? That looked like armageddon from Manhattan!
i came out of my apartment and saw a huge cloud of black smoke directly east on 14th street. although maybe not directly east since it's apparently in greenpoint. still, pretty eye-opening.
I saw it as soon as I opened my eyes in Bushwick this morning, and I thought Manhattan was on fire. Let me tell you, depth perception does not function at 6:25am.
it was insane! the walls have started to fall. photos in a few!
it seems very, very suspicious!
I saw the flames from across Newton Creek on the 7 this morning at 745a ... looked pretty intense from a few hundred yards away.
Probably a perfect view from up in the LIC Citi building.
http://flickr.com/photos/jcn/139054801/
Got a wild view of the fire while biking over the Williamsburg bridge this morning. At one point flames shot what looked like several stories into the air! Woah!
Hey "me:" nice "Family Guy" reference...
You can bet that this land will be rezoned as residential and multi-million dollar condos will be going up sometime soon...
Definite smell of burning debris noted in Park Slope. Couldn't be sure if overcast skies were a result of smoke or the actual weather conditions.
Here are my photos - I got as close as West & Oak, and when the walls started to fall, they had to push the line back.
You can see huge plumes of smoke from Weehawken NJ. From that view, it actually looked like there was a huge fire raging near the Empire State Building. I was home and heard on the news about the fire so I knew right away what the cause of the smoke was, but when I jumped on the bus to work half an hour later, there were concerned people already sitting on the bus who had no idea what the smoke was about. Along Blvd East, which is a main road parallel to the Hudson River, people were calling friends & family to ask if there was a fire in Manhattan, that's how scary & close it looked from our vantage point. Sadly it reminded me of the smoke from the WTC collapse...
very scary to watch from a few blocks away. I've never seen smoke so huge and black before!
Developer's fire...
You can see the flames from the Queens side of the Midtown tunnel approach @ 8:50. Eight news helicoptes were visable too.
A Co-worker just mentioned that people on his bus from NJ were crying as the Smoke reminded them of 9/11. The Driver explaned what it was, but until he did a lot of people were freaking out.
Can't really blame them, that's the last big amount of smoke I can recall...
Any idea when it started? I live about five blocks from there, and me and my roommates heard a very loud *bang* last night sometime in the middle of the evening--we argued about whether it was a car backfiring, and then went back to playing video games.
stu, i think i heard that bang too...but i thought that was earlier in the night - around 8.
The smoke was clearly visible from my E. 72nd St. cul-de-sac this morning.
I snagged a couple of shots from Long Island City.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/vincenzof/tags/greenpointwarehousefire/
Smells smoky in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn.
I could see it from my hallway in Astoria, and I had to go back into my apartment to look up where it was coming from.
I couldn't remember when the bang was--couldn't have been too late, since I moved from playing video games to surfing the Internet...
oy vey. it's bad that these are the touchstones of my evening.
Anyway, 8pm sounds about right. But this fire started in the middle of the night, apparently, so it must have been something else.
Weren't the abandoned warehouses used as filming locations? One guy told me they charged $5K a day to use them. I think that's why the condos never moved in.
It always looked like one faulty brick would send the whole thing crashing down.
Here's what it looks like from Union Square:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/olivial/139085654/
arson arson arson
More here: http://mihow.com/posts/2006/05/02/4207/
Plus, images of what it looked like before.
http://mihow.com/dailylinks/april29.html
My friend, Anna, thought it might be the Bowl. I called her a while ago, however. Is it? Did someone figure that out? She's on the Gotham Girls Roller Derby team and they practice there sometimes. Anyone know?
I could see the smoke from Astoria, near Steinway and 30th Ave.
on my way up the east side, i saw two more fire boats spraying the gas tanks just south of the terminal market to keep them cool. if tien's right, and this is intentional, it's unintentionally stupid and significantly more dangerous for the proximity of those tanks.
Stu, I also live about 5 blocks away, and that bang shook my windows. Is it possible there was some kind of internal explosion that resulted in a slow-burning fire? It's a strange coincidence, especially since no one seems to know what caused the sound.
How valuable is this land? Should we expect giant cranes in that part of Brooklyn, too?
what's with all these fires?
Speculator's, developers?
We're on Milton - about a block away - and we heard the bang shortly before 8. It sounded like it was in our building, it was so loud.
1010 WINS says at 9am this went to 7 alarms.
Anyone know who owns the land?
What a coincidence! Josh Guttman's the owner!
SAVE THE PALESTINE!!! or at least the watertower.
i would think the fire won't be spreading too far south b/c there's a large expanse btwn the warehouse and buildings south.
that's an interesting hypothesis jane.
jen, i would think cranes are already being moblized.
My gut says arson as it makes it cheaper for redevelopment when the building is knocked down through fire (which can potentially injure or kill some of The Bravest). Hopefully the fire marshal will investigate fully.
Yeah, we heard the bang last night at the Franklin Corner Store (the place w/ the "named sandwiches"). I'm sure this was around 8pm. It sounded a bit too loud to be a backfiring car.
Still not sure on how the fire got started,
Happened around 5 am.
Per NY1
i saw that smoke when i was getting on the L this morning. i wonder if that's why the trains were so slow..
it actually makes me really sad. last summer my (now) ex and i were wandering around greenpoint and stumbled upon that building. we spent a lot of time discussing how we were going to turn those skyways into our dream apartment
I recently went on a flickr-organized photostroll through and around the Greenpoint Terminal Market and what a wonderful place to photograph. (HERE we are taking pics) I was so, so sad to learn of this fire this morning on the news, and then to see the plumes of smoke overhead on my way to the train this morning.
I wouldn't be surprised to learn that this fire was started by some unsavory developers.
I heard the bang yesterday too. Thought it was kids setting off firecrackers. Woken up by choppers/sirens today at 6:20a.
I was also woken up by shouts of "Fire!" on Sunday night/Monday morning at 1:00am- an apartment building was burning on Norman Ave btwn Eckford and Leonard, across the street from the library.
I am NOT trying to lay blame or stir up passions, but why was the same group of Hasidic men watching both fires? Then again, anyone who saw me at these scenes could ask the same thing of my presence.
Still, who owns the warehouse? Who owns the building on Norman?
As opposed to savory developers?
I, too, heard the bang last night around sunset, on Newel street near Nassau. It certainly sounded catastrophic, and too resonous to be either a gunshot or fireworks.
Pardon teh capital letters but this is important:
HAS ANYONE WHO'S BEEN TO THE SCENE HEARD ANYTHING ABOUT THE SQUATTERS THAT LIVED THERE?
We knew a guy living in there, he had a room right where those huge flames are in the photos.
The buildings were full of old clothing. The interiors were wood construction with many, many collapsed areas. The place was an old favorite of NYC explorers. There's plenty of photos of what it was like inside on the ltvsquad.com and just about every NYC UE site...
Anyway, if anyone hears about the squatters, and particularly the guy with a lot of tattoos, please post back or drop an email... I'm stuck at work so ...
Who is this Flickr user? He's marking all the fire photos as "favorites" and reposting a bunch as his own...very weird
http://www.flickr.com/photos/deryid/
Flames visible from the UWS this morning: http://www.flickr.com/photos/niznoz/139047664/
Pictures of the warehouses before the fire, including pictures of some of the inhabitants: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/greenpointterminalwarehouse/interesting/
What a coincidence! Josh Guttman's the owner!
Obvious, This is very interesting! the plot thickens.
I woke up at about 4:30 when my husband had a nighmare, then at about 6 I got dressed and we saw flames across the river in brooklyn. It looked like 2 buildings. first we saw smoke, then we saw red orange dots which we thought were flames coming from windows.
My husband thinks it is developers out to get the land. i dismissed it as a conspiracy theory, but now i am thinking different.
don't know about the evil jews at the norman ave fire but there are business and buildings on oak street owned by jews who are probably concerned about their buildings.
don't know about the evil jews at the norman ave fire but there are business and buildings on oak street owned by jews who are probably concerned about their buildings.
don't know about the evil jews at the norman ave fire but there are business and buildings on oak street owned by jews who are probably concerned about the fire spreading to their buildings.
I've got some photos of the Greenpoint Terminal Warehouse/Market area after a snowstorm on my flickr page.
OK - my previous comment is unfair. Some people stand out more than others, making their presence at two such similar events more conspicuous than others. AS I said, I watched both fires as well, so the same comment could be made about me. It was a stupid comment.
Still, I think attention should be paid to the fire on Norman Ave.
I'm pretty sure that's where the skate bowl is. I mentioned this in my earlier comment as well. I know that a lot of people - skateboarders and roller derby girls - use that space to skate.
It looks like Mr. Guttman already filed paperwork (retro active to 2001) with the DOB for demolition. Got approved 2 months ago.
Don't believe me? Look up 51 West Street on the DOB's Building Information System.
So, this means rents will be going down since
condos will be built, right? Supply and Demand, right?
I hope they catch whoever set this fire.
They are saying this is the largest fire seen in NYC in quite a while. 6 hours and still not controlled.
I hope people have homes to come back to tonight.
7 warehouses on fire, some cars caught fire.
I pray the firemen are safe.
Be careful guys.
why would guttman torch the building if he had clearance to demolish the building? I can understand the suspicion with the dumbo building because he didn't get to rezone the building.
Williamsburg looked like the Apocalypse... mustard colored sky, with chunky ash and East River water raining down out of the plume.
Maybe it was Rabbi Teitelbaum punishing his peeps for their succession battle!
How do you know all this jb?