ROASTING CORK IN A “HEIGHTS” FIRE (1907)
The Jehovah’s Witness complex in Downtown Brooklyn was once the scene of a roaring early morning 4-alarm fire that threatened to destroy the vast warehouse district that existed there in 1907. Sitting along the waterfront at the location of the fire – on both Columbia Heights and Furman Street – was a cork company, a coffee roasting factory, and an ice plant. SAVING THE WAREHOUSES It is not known where exactly within the complex the fire broke out, but it was determined by many of the residents of the district that the aroma of burnt coffee and cork did not make for a attractive combination that morning. The “oily reek of cork” was in the smell of the smoke throughout the morning, while roasted coffee – roasted twice over – brought residents to realize which warehouses were caught within the conflagration. The buildings in the picture above sat on what is now the Jehovah’s Witness compound and comprised a number of private homes that were still existent within the old warehouse district. Among them was “a frame house of the old style sort, two stories in height, with a mansard roof for an attic.” And in that building Catherine O’Neill, 50, and her bedridden sister, Agnes O’Neill, 65, both former “schoolma’rms,” feared for their lives. SAVING THE SCHOOLMARMS Patrolman Keating, who sounded the alarm, grew concerned as their building was shrouded in black smoke. No one had seen the two women that morning, and he “feared that something had happened to them.” So, […]
