Emergency Response to the St. George Ferry Terminal Fire, Staten Island, NY- 1946

Staten Island Ferry Terminal Fire

Photograph

Photographs documenting the emergency response to the nine-alarm fire that destroyed the St. George ferry and railway terminal on Staten Island in June 1946, recording fire apparatus, a hospital ambulance crew, and rescue workers amid the smoking wreckage. The fire began at 2:30 in the afternoon of June 25, 1946, under a car, and spread to the terminal's wooden support pilings. Nine alarms were transmitted within half an hour, summoning fifty land companies and six fireboats; three civilians were killed and more than 250 firemen and 30 civilians were injured or overcome by smoke.
Photo archive of 8 silver gelatin snapshot photographs, approximately 5 x 3 inches, Staten Island, New York, with the original mailing envelope inscribed in ink "Martha, Staten Island Ferry Terminal burnt down June 1947." One image centers a panel-body ambulance lettered "St. Vincent's Hospital" and "Staten Island," parked beside an open rear ambulance where attendants in white tend a patient. Another shows workmen, uniformed officers, and helmeted firemen clustered around the rescue vehicles below the gutted upper story. Several frames show pairs of wooden and steel rapid transit cars standing scorched on the rails beneath the twisted, collapsed ribs of the train shed, windows blown out and roofs caved in. A trackside view captures fire engines lined nose to tail along the roadway.
The nine alarms transmitted within thirty minutes, the fifty land companies, and the Manhattan units racing through the Holland Tunnel show standard FDNY multi-borough mutual aid working at full stretch, recorded by a bystander close enough to walk the platforms. The St. George fire ranks among the worst in Staten Island history, and FDNY commanders called it one of the most stubborn blazes they had faced, the burning rooted deep in the terminal's wooden pilings over the water. The destroyed structure was replaced by an entirely new $21 million terminal that opened in 1951. Overall in very good condition. A direct, on-the-ground record of a multi-borough emergency response to a fatal nine-alarm fire that erased a major New York transit terminal.

Item #23436

Price: $450.00