The Philadelphia Inquirer
PHILADELPHIA, Pa. — Firefighters controlled a smoky two-alarm fire that burned through the Suit Corner store at Third and Market Streets in Old City Wednesday.
One firefighter suffered a minor injury in the fire at South Third and Market Streets, Fire Commissioner Lloyd Ayers said.
The business, a one-story building attached to a 19th Century four-story building, is on the same intersection as the old Suit Corner, scene of a wall collapse during demolition last month.
Firefighters pumped water on the blaze for more than an hour before it was declared under control around 10:37 a.m.
But around 11:05 a.m., huge billows of black smoke rose from the four-story building, and a choking white smoke obscured the street. Passersby coughed and walked quickly to avoid the enveloping cloud.
Firefighters turned a hose on again, the water arcing intensely over Market Street from a three- to four-story high nozzle on the north side of the street.
Fire officials are investigating the cause of the fire. Gary Ginsberg, an owner of the store who was inside when the fire broke out, said he believed it was electrical.
City inspectors issued a violation April 1 for the exterior condition of the 4-story building at 302 Market, where windows were covered or boarded up.
Fire Department Deputy Chief Eric Fleming said the fire began on the first and second floors of the four-story building next to the main showroom and spread to the showroom and all four floors.
The blaze blanketed Old City in smoke and the firefighting effort flooded Market Street as water gushed in the gutters.
The fire apparently was fueled in part by clothing in the store.
Ginsberg said he and eight employees were in the building when the fire started and all got out safely.
He said he and an employee tried to put out the flames with an extinguisher.
“It was too strong,” Ginsberg said.
The store shares the 300 block of the southside of Market Street with several eating establishments and the historic old Post Office.
Wayne Artez, 48, manager of the High Street on Market restaurant three doors west of the blaze said, “I saw a little fire in the first-floor of the store at 9:15. Then glass started and the flames started shooting upward.”
Within three minutes, “it was a blazing inferno,” Artez said. “All that polyester in there burning up.”
Artez said he believed floors two through four of the Suit Corner were used for storage of clothing.
He said the injured firefighter was treated at the scene for what appeared to be a neck injury.
Artez said the fire brought back bad memories of a blaze in an umbrella store 10 years ago just around the corner on Third Street.
Chef-jacketed members of the culinary crew from the upscale Fork restaurant watched the firefighting efforts from a corner after their kitchen filled with smoke and they were evacuated.
“In a kitchen there’s a lot of smoke - you have to decipher what’s good and bad,” said Kate O’Neill, a pastry chef. “This didn’t smell right.”
Chefs, servers, hostesses and the restaurant’s single customer hightailed it down the street as “flames billowed out"" from the Suit Corner, pastry chef Dana Gigliotti said.
Across the street, Ben Cross clutched his Pomeranian, Moon, and watched as firefighters climbed to the roof of his apartment building at 304 Market Street.
He had been at work at his chimney-restoration company in Media when the fire began. Moon, however, was at home.
When firefighters made their way into 304 Market, Moon took the opportunity to evacuate, dashing past fire crews and down Market Street.
A Fork employee managed to grab the frightened dog at the corner and gave her to Cross when he arrived back on Market Street.
He wasn’t optimistic about the state of his apartment - “it doesn’t look good” - but Deputy Chief Fleming said the building had suffered minimal damage.
At the Suit Corner, on the other hand, the roof was gone, the windows were blown out and hot spots still smoldered.
“This is Old City and there is a major problem with these old buildings,” said Ginsberg, Suit Corner’s owner. “It went up like an explosion.”
He said the fire probably spelled the end of his family’s presence at the intersection. His uncle had owned the Shirt Corner before it was sold to developers.
“All these years at 3rd and Market going down to an end,” he said. “I just can’t believe this is happening ... It just went up in smoke.”
Kim Derstine, 46, owner of Fire & Ice restaurant on seven doors west, said she became breathless “with my heart in my stomach” when she got a call saying “the whole block is burning.”
Relieved to learn that wasn’t true, she said she was concerned for the residents of the building directly next door to the blaze, none of whom was reported injured but may be temporarily forced from their homes.
Derstine and other business people were generous in their praise of firefighters, whose quick actions saved their stores and restaurants.
The first engine to respond to the blaze came from the fire house nine blocks away at 10th and Cherry Streets, arriving about three minutes after the 911 call came into dispatch, said a fire department spokesman, Capt. Clifford Gilliam.
The response time falls within the four-minute standard adopted by the National Fire Protection Association.
The fire house closest to the blaze - at 4th and Arch Street - has been closed since September after an electrical fire in an ambulance damaged the building.
If it the station was open, the ladder truck normally stationed there would have been two blocks from the fire scene.
The department used to house Engine 8 at the Arch Street station, but the city decommissioned the truck in 2009 as part of budget cuts. Engine trucks carry with gallons of water. At the time of the closing, the Philadelphia Fire Fighters’ Union criticized the city for removing the historic district’s lone fire engine.
Inquirer Staff writers Dylan Purcell and Mike Newall contributed to this article.