23rd Street Fire
23rd Street Fire (Lower Manhattan)
On October 17, 1966, a fire broke out at a four-story art gallery building at 7 East 22nd Street in Manhattan’s Flatiron District. The alarm came in at 9:36 p.m. The basement of the building held highly flammable lacquer, paint, and finished wood frames, which helped the fire burn intensely.
Firefighters from the New York City Fire Department responded and found it nearly impossible to enter through the 22nd Street side because of thick smoke and heat. They tried to access the fire from the neighboring drugstore at 6 East 23rd Street, where a common basement connected the two buildings. A recent construction project had removed a load-bearing wall between them, allowing more storage under the drugstore. The floor of the drugstore was built on wooden beams with a thick concrete and terrazzo floor above, and the heat weakened these beams.
At 10:39 p.m., about an hour after the alarm, a 15-by-35-foot section of the floor collapsed, sending ten firefighters into the burning cellar. Two other firefighters on the first floor were killed in a flashover. In total, 12 firefighters were killed—two chiefs, two lieutenants, and eight firefighters. It took 14 hours to reach the bodies amid the rubble. The loss was the worst in the Fire Department’s history until the 2001 World Trade Center attacks.
The tragedy left behind 12 widows and 32 children. The fire grew to a fifth alarm, and on October 21, about 10,000 firefighters lined Fifth Avenue as ten coffins were carried to services at St. Thomas Church and St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Firefighters from around the U.S. and abroad paused to pay tribute, including a large group from Boston.
Today, Madison Green stands on the former site of the 23rd Street Fire.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 18:36 (CET).