Five-Alarm Fire on Brooklyn Waterfront Devastates Artists’ Warehouse

Communities in New York have unpredictable ways of forming. In Red Hook, an industrial neighborhood on the Brooklyn waterfront once called “the crack capital of America,” a string of disused 19th-century warehouses became the seeds of a thriving arts destination.

Earlier this week, one of those buildings, at 481 Van Brunt Street, was chock-full of work from more than 500 artists for the annual open studio tour — a showcase for a neighborhood that, in rare fashion, did not ultimately price out the artists who revitalized it.

Shortly before midnight on Wednesday, a fire tore through the wood-framed warehouse, sending flames into the sky that could be seen from miles away. It grew to a five-alarm blaze, requiring more than 200 firefighters, and was still smoldering on Friday morning.

On Friday, assorted artisans, artists and small business owners, including Ms. Spivack, were left wondering whether their life’s work was destroyed. And just as crucially, they wondered what the building’s future would be — whether the affordable Red Hook that drew them would rise from the ashes or be replaced by pricier development.

“I’ve often said if I lost that studio, I would probably leave New York,” Ms. Spivack said. “I can’t imagine being anywhere else.”

The building and the community that coalesced there were largely the creation of a retired police detective named Gregory O’Connell, who began restoring real estate in Red Hook in the 1990s, when developers considered the neighborhood too dangerous or isolated to bother with.

Where others saw an obsolete industrial port adjoining Brooklyn’s largest public housing project, Mr. O’Connell, who died in August, saw inexpensive real estate and cavernous warehouses with large open spaces — catnip for artists, who had been priced out of SoHo.

“He was very good at using the arts to rebrand not only his property but the neighborhood,” said Carolina Salguero, executive director of PortSide NewYork, a nonprofit group that operates a decommissioned oil tanker in the harbor nearby, where Ms. Salguero also lives. “If you love Red Hook now, you owe Greg O’Connell a great deal.”

To jump-start the transition, Mr. O’Connell offered 25,000 square feet rent-free in the building to the Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition in 1990. The artists, in turn, brought visitors, shops, restaurants and other businesses to the neighborhood.

Yet Red Hook has not gone the way of other gentrifying neighborhoods, like SoHo or TriBeCa, partly because the subway is not nearby, said Stefan Dreisbach-Williams, a public historian of New York Harbor and assistant director of public programs at the Waterfront Museum and Showboat Barge. Red Hook is cut off from its neighbors by the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, a barrier both physical and psychological.

“Has Red Hook been gentrified?” asked Alicia Degener, president of the Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition. “Yes, but not as much as it could have been. It hasn’t lost its funky, waterfront soul.”

Since the fire, Ms. Degener said, support has been pouring in for the organization and the artists it serves.

Art restorers and craftspeople have volunteered to help people whose areas were damaged, she said. “I’ve burst out in tears so many times thinking of all the support we’ve been getting,” she said.

Other tenants were less sanguine about the future of the building and the neighborhood, seeing portents in the one-two punch of Mr. O’Connell’s death in August and the devastating fire.

“Something’s shifting,” said Jean Lee, a lighting designer who with her husband, Dylan Davis, chose Red Hook because the waterfront and quiet reminded them of their hometown, Seattle. “It’s a new chapter.”

Mayor Eric Adams has said he wants to remake the waterfront in Red Hook and northward into a dense, mixed-use development with thousands of housing units. After neighborhood opposition, the city removed part of the plan that would have allowed 325-foot tall residential buildings deep into Red Hook. Still, when fully built, the proposed development would more than double the area’s population.

Adela Wagner, 35, an interdisciplinary artist and community organizer, had 13 years of work in a studio inside the building on Van Brunt.

Mx. Wagner, who uses they and them pronouns, said that friends have offered to help them find another studio space, but that there would be nothing to put inside it.

They compared losing their work to someone with dementia losing memories, core parts of who they were, all at once. “It’s all we have,” the artist said, calling the fire a “huge loss.” Where artists could eventually replace their equipment or damaged materials, the artwork cannot be replaced. Federal funding cuts to arts organizations are also a challenge, Mx. Wagner added.

“I just hope the building’s not going to become another Amazon thing,” they said.

Fire Department personnel were working Friday to establish a collapse zone around the warehouse, and only some parts of the building were safe enough for them to enter. Much of the roof and the fourth floor had collapsed.

One firefighter who had entered the Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition’s space hollered down from a window that almost all of the art was undamaged.

“Yes, yes!” Tamavis Santiago, the coalition’s chair of exhibitions, yelled back. “I could kiss you, but I don’t know you!”

Carly Baker-Rice, executive director of the Red Hook Business Alliance, said she was confident that the building would be restored, with some alterations to make it more resilient to sea rise. Architects had been on the site since Thursday, she said. “There’s so much love for this building, not just in Red Hook, but throughout the city,” she said.

Ms. Degener, the president of the artists’ coalition, remained hopeful. Artists are used to disruptions, and often produce powerful work in response to hardship. Her group moved this weekend’s scheduled exhibition to other venues. Crowdfunding pages raised more than $100,000 in the first day. The outpouring of support has taken some of the sting out of a truly devastating loss, Ms. Degener said.

“We always feel no one knows we’re here,” she said. “They do, and they’re coming forward to help us.”

Matthew Haag contributed reporting, and Susan C. Beachy contributed research.