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 The Jewish Theological Seminary Library is one of the largest Jewish libraries in the world. Founded in 1893, it is located at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in New York City, New York, and holds over 400,000 volumes, as well as exten ...

tower at

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and 122nd Street at the in Morningside Heights,

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

. 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 A fire chief or fire commissioner is a top executive rank or commanding officer in a fire department. Nomenclature Various official English-language titles for a fire chief include ''fire chief'', ''chief fire officer'' and ''fire commissioner' ...

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. Menahem Schmelzer, the

librarian A librarian is a person who works professionally in a library providing access to information, and sometimes social or technical programming, or instruction on information literacy to users. The role of the librarian has changed much over time ...

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. But the water had caused enormous damage and the growth of mold threatened to do more. After rejecting several methods for drying the water-soaked books, the suggestion was brought to Rabbi David Kogen, then-vice chancellor of the Seminary, to place paper towels between the pages of every book to absorb the moisture. Volunteers of all ages were recruited from around the neighborhood and Jewish day school students were brought in to help. The paper toweling was supplied by local retailers and manufacturers. Some 70,000 volumes were destroyed in the fire and many more were damaged.LOST MEMORY - LIBRARIES AND ARCHIVES DESTROYED IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
( ) The library's rare books and manuscripts, which were stored elsewhere, were spared. The library's book collection was rebuilt with the help of donations from private and institutional libraries. The books were moved to a prefabricated building in the JTS courtyard that remained until a new library building was completed in 1984. The library now exceeds 380,000 volumes. With the assistance of the Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, 35,000 books that were saved from the fire and placed in high-density storage are being restored and catalogued.

References

{{Authority control 1966 in New York City Conservative Judaism in New York (state) Jewish libraries Jewish Theological Seminary of America Libraries in Manhattan Library fires Morningside Heights, Manhattan School fires 1966 fires in the United States

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