By Valerie Faciane
The Times-Picayune
NEW ORLEANS — Nearly 60 firefighters were called in to control a fire that virtually destroyed a historic home on Esplanade Avenue Tuesday night, fire officials said.
The three-story home at 1632 Esplanade was vacant at the time. It was built around 1874 and has been described as a gable-sided, three-bay side-hall townhouse with a balcony done in the Italianate style.
Last fall, the property was placed in an Orleans Parish civil sheriff’s sale as the result of a lawsuit brought against the last known owner, Santos Gustavo Zelaya Jr., by the U.S. Bank National Association, according to mortgage and conveyance records. The bank purchased the property during the foreclosure sale, according to the Civil Sheriff’s Office. Zelaya couldn’t be reached for comment.
No injuries were reported in the three-alarm fire at the multiunit building, said Capt. Terry Hardy Sr., spokesman for the New Orleans Fire Department. The department dispatched engines beginning at 8:45 p.m., and within four minutes firefighters arrived to find the wood-frame structure engulfed in flames.
Hardy said the fire is suspicious because there were no utilities turned on in the building.
Firefighters were forced to fight the fire from outside the building because of the intensity of the blaze and the structure’s poor condition, Hardy said. Hand-hose lines and fire trucks with booms were used to spray water, he said.
Second and third alarms were sounded to bring additional equipment and firefighters to the scene.
The fire was declared under control at 11:13 p.m., officials said. A fire watch started at 12:30 a.m. Wednesday because firefighters and investigators couldn’t safely enter the building.
The house had been neglected for years, said Marie Marcal, board member and former president of the Esplanade Ridge and Treme Civic Association.
“We worked on trying to get something done to get it back into commerce; we wanted it to stay residential,” she said.
Marcal said the loss of the house is heartbreaking to the neighborhood because “it was one of the bigger houses, one of the grander houses that was just allowed to deteriorate, and I think it will have to be demolished.”
Copyright 2008 The Times-Picayune Publishing Company