A nearby construction forced the nearly year-long closure of the New York City Fire Museum. Now the museum is seeking donations to repair the structure and keep it open.
Construction of Disney's new high-rise headquarters, adjacent to the 120-year-old former fire station on Spring Street, caused “significant structural damage" to the museum.
Executive Director Patti Murphy told the New York Post that the three-story, former Engine 30 fire station suffered nearly $6 million in damage from the Disney project.
An emergency evacuation of the museum was ordered on May 11, 2024, Time Out NY reported.
As museum staff was preparing for an event last year, the called Murphy.
“They said they heard a loud banging, the building started to shake and then they said to me the floor felt soft,” Murphy told the New York Post.
Eleven months later, Murphy told the newspaper that they'll need to raise money to make needed repairs and to keep the museum open.
“We’re a very small nonprofit, we’re a self-sustaining organization so our operations are pretty much in a dire position because we’ve been closed so long,” she said.
She said New York City inspectors found that cranes for the Disney project caused the damage at the fire museum and the city is looking to collect on the damages.
The museum has nearly 30,000 artifacts from the timeline of New York City's fire protection and an area dedicated to the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
Peter Matthews | Editor-in-Chief/Conference Director
Peter Matthews is the conference director and editor-in-chief of Firehouse. He has worked at Firehouse since 1999, serving in various roles on both Firehouse Magazine and Firehouse.com staffs. He completed an internship with the Rochester, NY, Fire Department and served with fire departments in Rush, NY, and Laurel, MD, and was a lieutenant with the Glenwood Fire Company in Glenwood, NY. Matthews served as photographer for the St. Paul, MN, Fire Department.
