The Park Place disaster occurred on August 22, 1891, in New York City when benzene vapor from a bronze powder manufacturer ignited, causing an explosion that resulted in the collapse of the five-story Taylor Building that housed the manufacturer along with other businesses. Two fires then broke out, one in the ruins of the manufacturer and the other in a restaurant that was caused by a natural gas leak. [1] [2] The disaster killed 61 people, while local residents were admonished in the press for rubbernecking and general insensitivity. [1] [3] A grand jury declined to indict any of the owners or occupants of the building, however legislation was introduced in the New York State Assembly that sought to tighten the building code in light of this disaster and the 1892 Hotel Royal fire. [4] [5]
The Manhattan Psychiatric Center is a New York-state run psychiatric hospital on Wards Island in New York City. As of 2009, it was licensed for 509 beds, but holds only around 200 patients. The current building is 17 stories tall. The building strongly resembles the main building of the Creedmoor Psychiatric Center in Queens. It is adjacent to Kirby Forensic Psychiatric Center, a specialized facility for patients with criminal convictions.
The Civic Center is an area and neighborhood in Lower Manhattan, Manhattan, New York City, that encompasses New York City Hall, One Police Plaza, the courthouses in Foley Square, the Metropolitan Correctional Center, and the surrounding area. The district is bound on the west by Tribeca at Broadway, on the north by Chinatown at Worth Street or Bayard Street, on the east by the East River and the Brooklyn Bridge at South Street, and on the south by the Financial District at Ann Street.
MTA Regional Bus Operations operates local and express buses serving New York City in the United States out of 29 bus depots. These depots are located in all five boroughs of the city, plus one located in nearby Yonkers in Westchester County. 21 of these depots serve MTA New York City Transit (NYCT)'s bus operations, while the remaining eight serve the MTA Bus Company These facilities perform regular maintenance, cleaning, and painting of buses, as well as collection of revenue from bus fareboxes. Several of these depots were once car barns for streetcars, while others were built much later and have only served buses. Employees of the depots are represented by local divisions of the Transport Workers Union of America (TWU), particularly the TWU Local 100 or of the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU)'s Local's 726 for all depots in Staten Island, 1056 for Casey Stengel, Jamaica, and Queens Village Depots, 1179 for JFK & Far Rockaway Depots, and 1181 for Spring Creek Depot.
The 1924 Nixon Nitration Works disaster was an explosion and fire that claimed many lives and destroyed several square miles of New Jersey factories. It began on March 1, 1924, about 11:15 a.m., when an explosion destroyed a building in Nixon, New Jersey used for processing ammonium nitrate. The explosion touched off fires in surrounding buildings in the Nixon Nitration Works that contained other highly flammable materials. The disaster killed twenty people, destroyed forty buildings, and demolished the "tiny industrial town of Nixon, New Jersey."
The Appleton Building occupied the front of a small block which was bounded by Broadway, Leonard Street, and Catharine Alley in New York City. It stood on the site of what is now 346 Broadway, was four stories tall, and was constructed entirely of brown stone. It was a familiar landmark in a quickly changing Broadway of the mid-19th century. It was one of Broadway's oldest buildings.
The Kemble Building was an eight-story edifice located at 15–25 Whitehall Street between Bridge Street and Stone Street. It stood opposite the Custom House in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan, New York City. Owned by the Ogden Goelet Estate, the structure adjoined the seven-story New York Produce Exchange Building. At first employed as a cotton warehouse, it was used for office space beginning in 1882. Prior to the Kemble Building's erection, the site was occupied by the business of Hendrick Willemsen, a baker and bread inspector.
Rowe Street is an abandoned train station in the town of Bloomfield, New Jersey. The station was a former stop on the Boonton Line, which ran from Hoboken Terminal to Hackettstown, reaching Rowe Street in Bloomfield. The station was constructed by the Erie Railroad in 1955 as a replacement for the Orchard Street station and the former Bloomfield station, which was eliminated for construction of the Garden State Parkway. Construction of the new depot began on April 1, 1955 of a 17 by 45 feet single-story brick building. The construction of the depot and the 26-space parking lot cost $23,000 (1955 USD).
The Old Brooklyn Fire Headquarters is a historic building located at 365-367 Jay Street near Willoughby Street in Downtown Brooklyn, New York City. Designed by Frank Freeman in the Richardsonian Romanesque Revival style and built in 1892 for the Brooklyn Fire Department, it was used as a fire station until the 1970s, after which it was converted into residential apartments. The building, described as "one of New York's best and most striking architectural compositions", was made a New York City landmark in 1966, and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972.
The Middle Collegiate Church is a dually aligned United Church of Christ and Reformed Church in America church located at 112 Second Avenue between 6th and 7th Streets in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City.
The Church of St. Andrew is a Roman Catholic parish church in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York, located at 20 Cardinal Hayes Place, Manhattan, New York City. It was established in 1842. The present building was erected in 1939 through a joint effort involving Maginnis & Walsh and Robert J. Reiley in the Georgian Revival architectural style.
The New York Law Institute is the oldest circulating law library in New York City and is open to Institute members and to scholars of history and the law.
Italian Hall was a two-story commercial and recreational building in Calumet, Michigan, built in 1908 and demolished in 1984. Two prior buildings known popularly as "Italian Hall" had stood on the site. The first floor housed commercial space with a large hall on the second floor. The building served as headquarters for the Società Mutua Beneficenza Italiana and hosted community events. The hall is notorious as the site of a disaster in 1913 in which over 70 people died after a false cry of "fire" at a Christmas party. Since demolition, the site has served as a memorial park. The property is a Michigan State Historic Site and the building was formerly on the National Register of Historic Places.
The Savoy-Plaza Hotel was a 33-story hotel overlooking Central Park at Fifth Avenue and East 59th Street in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. It opened in 1927 and was demolished in 1965.
The South Brooklyn Marine Terminal (SBMT) is an intermodal shipping, warehousing, and manufacturing complex in the Port of New York and New Jersey. It is located along the Upper New York Bay, between 29th and 39th Streets in the Sunset Park and Greenwood Heights neighborhoods of Brooklyn, New York City. The site is adjacent to Bush Terminal and Industry City, which respectively lie directly to the south and east. A recycling and waste transfer facility managed by Sims Metal Management is the major tenant. In May 2018, the city contracted partners to activate the largely unused terminal.
Holland House was a New York City hotel located at 274–276 Fifth Avenue at the southwest corner of 30th Street in NoMad, Manhattan, New York City, with a frontage of 250 feet (76 m) on Fifth Avenue. The architects and designers were George Edward Harding & Gooch. A mercantile building by the 1920s, in the present day, it is a loft building.
The Spingler Building is an eight-story Romanesque building at 5–9 Union Square West, between 14th and 15th Streets, in the Union Square neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. Built in 1897 by William H. Hume & Son, it replaced a five-story building of the same name, which burned down in 1892. The Spingler Building occupies an L-shaped lot wrapping around 15 Union Square West to the north, and is also adjacent to the Lincoln Building to the south.
The Hercules Powder plant disaster was an explosion at an armaments factory owned by the Hercules Powder Company in the Kenvil section of Roxbury, New Jersey, on 12 September 1940. About 52 people were killed and 100 injured.
The Ninth Ward School disaster occurred on November 20, 1851, at Ward School No. 26 on Greenwich Street in New York City. While classes were in session, panic suddenly arose among the teachers and students about a possible fire in the building. A mass of students proceeded to flee down a staircase, causing the bannister to fail and the students to tumble into a large pile—reportedly 10 to 12 feet deep—at the bottom of the staircase. Forty-three students died, mostly due to suffocation. An investigation determined that the students' escape had been slowed by inward-swinging exit doors and that the construction of the staircase bannister was insufficient to support the weight of the students. While a coroner's jury found no fault in the accident, it recommended that all schools be built with fire-protected stairways and outward-opening exit doors.
The Hotel Royal fire occurred on February 7, 1892, at the Hotel Royal in New York City, killing 28 people. The fire began in the hotel's elevator shaft, where the night engineer was performing maintenance work by the light of a candle. The candle's flame either ignited a gas leak in the shaft, or it caught a dry tinder such as dust and was then flamed by the strong winds blowing through the shaft. A coroner's jury assigned no fault for the fire and made no recommendations for safety improvements; however, legislation was introduced in the New York State Assembly that sought to tighten the building code in light of the fire as well as the 1891 Park Place disaster.