WATCH: (Scroll Down For Video) Father Djokan Majstorovic tried to push closer and closer to his church, to no avail. The corner of Manhattan’s W. 25 St. and Broadway was cordoned off and swarming with firefighters.
“I feel like I’m in a nightmare right now,” Father Majstorovic said to the AP. Mere hours earlier on May 1, the Serbian Orthodox Cathedral of St. Sava had been packed with worshippers celebrating Easter Sunday. Now, the 150-year-old church is a smoldering, skeletal remain of its past self.
Just before 7 p.m., smoke could be seen creeping out of the historic church’s gray roof. Within an hour it was a raging blaze, with orange tongues licking the sky and flames shooting out of shattered stained-glass windows. The four-alarm fire brought in 170 firefighters from the New York Fire Department, and they still battled the fire for three hours before they knocked its main body back. Fire hoses were trained on the church’s carcass into the early morning hours.
“I’m in shock. I don’t know what to say,” said the church caretaker’s stepson, Alex Velic, to the Daily News. “It’s sad.”
Fire officials said Velic’s stepfather raced back into the church to try to put out the flames and suffered minor smoke inhalation. He was rescued, and there were no other injuries.
Authorities have yet to say what caused the fire. The church has stood through more than 150 years of change in Manhattan since it was designed by Neo-Gothic architect Richard M. Upjohn as an Episcopal chapel. It was built in the early 1850s and named Trinity Chapel.
The building was purchased by the Serbian Orthodox Diocese of America and Canada in the 1940s as Episcopalians migrated out of the Tenderloin area in favor of uptown New York. The church complex has been serving New York’s Serbian community ever since, becoming a designated city landmark in 1968.
“This is a huge loss for the community,” said Council Member Corey Johnson. Johnson is calling for a full investigation into the cause of the fire.
(c) 2016, The Washington Post ยท Jenny Starrs
