Big Town, Big Picture: 2515 Amsterdam Ave.
NY Daily News 7/15/09
It
was more than just another building collapse – it was the
pivotal disaster that thrust into public prominence a man
destined to become one of the mid-century city’s most
influential political leaders. The scene: 2515 Amsterdam Ave., a
six-story tenement adjacent to a creaking old ice plant that one
afternoon in December 1946 went up in flames. Firefighters
worked desperately into the night to beat back the roaring
blaze, but at 1:19 a.m., Thursday, Dec. 12, the heavy roof
collapsed and one long wall bulged and cracked — and then
crashed down upon the building next door, cutting it in half and
burying the people who lived there under tons of rubble.
Thirty-seven men, women and children died, whole families. Here
was the fast end of Housing Commissioner Newton Saxl, who
presided over a department riddled with petty chiselers and
bribe-takers. Shortly after Christmas, Mayor William O’Dwyer
replaced Saxl with Robert Wagner Jr., son of the distinguished
elder-statesman senator and a vigorous champion of safer city
housing since his pre-war days as a state assemblyman. Wagner
immediately shook things up from top to bottom, fast
establishing himself as a reformer whose career path shortly
took him to the Manhattan borough presidency — and then to three
terms as mayor, during which administration the city’s landscape
was fundamentally remade.
|
|
|
FDNY Major l FDNY Rescues l FDNY Brotherhood l FDNY Events l FDNY Profiles l FDNY Events |
