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.
“I’ve always been afraid of a fire in those buildings,” said Rebecca Spivack, a fine artist who moved into a studio on the third floor in a “semi-communal” space in 2009. “They’re old buildings. They’re well built, but we have woodworkers, people who use chemicals and stuff like that.”
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.
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