Jewish Theological Seminary Library fire
Open-knowledge reference entry
The Jewish Theological Seminary Library fire was discovered on Monday, April 18, 1966, at 10:15 AM when smoke was seen pouring from one of the small upper windows of the Jewish Theological Seminary Library tower at Broadway and 122nd Street in Morningside Heights, Manhattan, New York City.
The tower, with only few small windows, was the perfect environment for a major conflagration. There were no floors separating one level from another, only steel library stacks surrounded by catwalks. The tower was like an oven and the fire spread quickly. Extinguishing it was extremely difficult, with only one entrance and stairwell from the bottom and limited window access.
Fire Chief Alfred Eckert dispatched masked firefighters to the highest floor that could be safely reached. The firefighters spread canvas tarpaulins over as many shelves of books as they could, while hook and ladder trucks sprayed water through the highest openings in the tower, cascading down to the fire below. The fire was declared under control at about 7:00 PM, nine hours after it was discovered.
Menachem Schmelzer, the librarian at the time, joined Gerson Cohen, the future chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, and the fire chief, for the initial foray into the damp, charred stacks. The fire had been confined primarily to the upper stacks, which housed mostly second and third copies of books, although some important recent acquisitions had also been kept there.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6189969. Authority coordinates are 40.812, -73.961. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1966.
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