"It Was Déjà Vu All Over Again"

"It Was Déjà Vu All Over Again"

Submitted by Dr. Paul Loatman, City Historian

I hate to quote the great philosopher, Yogi Berra, in discussing such a serous topic, but his sentiments may have been shared by many local residents in the early 1960s when it came to large fires. Recently, people have been scratching their heads trying to figure out when Levine’s Army and Navy Store on Francis and North Main went up in smoke. Their confusion may be due to the fact that the fire occurred two years to the day after the Fantauzzi Restaurant fire of New Year’s Day 1961.

A number of aspects tie both fires together in peoples’ minds. Not only did each of them ring in a new year but they both occurred in horrible weather conditions which hindered firemen’s efforts. Fantauzzi’s Venetian Restaurant ended its storied career in the middle of a blizzard, while Levine’s greeted 1963 in sub-zero weather which left its burnt-out shell resembling some grotesque ice palace in the days following the fire.

Each building had been something of a landmark, Fantauzzi’s serving as a leading eatery known throughout the Capital District, while Levine’s had long been known as something of an engineering feat when it was built by Dr. John Purcell in 1905 on top of a bridge. The good doctor was so successful in pulling off his "local wonder" that even today, most travelers on Francis St. fail to recognize that they are crossing a bridge.

Unlike today’s strip malls, both structures were multiple-story units which housed businesses in ground-level storefronts, with the upper two floors in each case serving as living quarters for a number of families who rented apartments. Mixed function buildings combining residences and businesses on the same site once gave cities a unique social character not replicated in today’s malls or suburbia, and it is more than mere nostalgia which leads so many to regret the loss of such landmarks.

Both fires began in a way which seemed innocuous. As The Saratogian issue of January 3, 1961, stated "What appeared to be a not too serious blaze" quickly got out of hand. As an oil spill in the basement was being dealt with around noon, the fuel oil erupted suddenly when the furnace kicked in on a bitterly cold day. Before long, huge crowds of on-lookers and over 200 firemen from twelve communities witnessed the eerie sight of black, billowing smoke turning afternoon into night in the middle of a blizzard. Things got worse as the day wore on, and NYSEG cut power to Mechanicville and the surrounding area as far away as Ketchum’s Corners so that firemen using aerial ladders would not be electrocuted by the high-tension wires strung along Central Avenue. In the middle of all of this, revelers working off their New Year’s Eve imbibing must have wondered what promises they had made to reform themselves the prior evening when a loud clap of thunder and a bolt of lightening crashed across the sky. To some, it must have seemed like Judgment Day. Firemen kept up the good fight for the rest of the day, and later in the week, they still were pumping water out of the cellar while trying to reduce the build-up of ice on Central and Park Avenues as the cold weather continued to make things miserable. Despite everyone’s best efforts, the building was a total loss, and subsequently, it was replaced by a new restaurant building, later a car dealership, which now houses a plumbing supply business. However, the fact that the fire did not spread to adjacent units, some of which still stand forty years later, testifies to the fact that firemen may have lost the battle, but they won the war.

Levine’s fire began on New Year’s Eve as hundreds of partygoers prepared to ring in 1963 at nearby Joyce’s Log Cabin. Initially, the blaze seemed to be limited to the basement area, but before long, firemen discovered that it had raced up through the heating system and was burning between the upper floors. Residents, including two infants, were evacuated, and although some people required hospitalization, no one was seriously injured. Although it was not snowing as it had been in the case of the Fantauzzi fire, the below-zero temperatures quickly turned the area around the fire-scene into a crystal palace. While this may have added a picturesque touch to the affair, the fact is that it made the footing for pedestrians and firemen treacherous for days afterward. Later, the task of tearing the structure down was complicated by the fact that this job had to be done without damming up the Tenendehowa Creek. When the building was erected in 1905, the creek followed two routes, one as it does today, and a second sprout which continued under North Main where a sluiceway provided power for a box factory on Mill St. This sprout was cut off when the building was first built, but there was concern in 1963 that demolishing the burnt-out structure would cause more problems than it solved by disturbing the original dam under the building. The fact that this did not occur gives evidence of the structural integrity of the original building whose super-structure is still obvious today. It is also due to the fact that in 1905, the Stillwater Town Board (responsible for maintaining our streets when we were still a village) responded to Dr. Purcell’s pleas that the cobblestone bridge on Francis St., then recently closed because of its structural weakness, be rehabilitated. Almost a century later, the wisdom of that decision continues to pay off.

The Levine fire had some unexpected repercussions. In a classic case of poor timing, the City Council had proposed to reduce fire department appropriations in December 1962. Needless to say, the Council meetings following the fire created their own source of heat and the city fathers graciously agreed to revisit their budget figures when confronted in their chambers by throngs of citizens who had taken a sudden interest in municipal affairs in light of the Levine fire. Within a few years, "urban renewal" would change our city-scape even more drastically than the New Year’s fires of 1961 and 1963. But viewed from the vantage point of nearly forty years’ hindsight, the giant conflagrations which etched their images into the memories of many people altered the shape of the community in ways only dimly understood at the time.