Fire destroys historic South Bushwick Reformed Church in Brooklyn
The 1853 wood-frame landmark, one of only a handful of its kind in the city, will be demolished after Friday's blaze collapsed its steeple.
Government and Cultural Heritage
The South Bushwick Reformed Church, a wood-frame Brooklyn landmark completed in 1853, was destroyed Friday afternoon in a fire that collapsed its steeple and left the structure so badly damaged that officials said it will have to be demolished.
The blaze broke out at the church at 855 Bushwick Ave., near Himrod Street, just before 1:30 p.m. June 19, the FDNY said in a post to social media. Firefighters arrived within three minutes and encountered a heavy fire.
The blaze grew to a third alarm within 20 minutes, involving 63 units and 192 fire and EMS personnel, the FDNY said.
Video captured by WABC-TV showed the steeple topple about 15 minutes after the fire began.
"As soon as they hit it with the water, the top just came down. It was crazy, it was like something you see in a movie," Anthony Williams, who said he called 911 after seeing smoke from across the street, told WABC-TV.
Another witness posted on the social platform X that the steeple had collapsed and called the building "a total loss."
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FDNY officials told WABC-TV that a deep-seated fire remained inside the church and that the rectory, a separate building behind it, was at risk. The rectory and an adjacent building also reportedly caught fire.
The South Bushwick Reformed Church, nicknamed the "White Church," was one of only eight wood-frame landmarked houses of worship in New York City, records show. The city designated it a landmark in 1968, and the church complex was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1982.
The congregation was organized in 1851 and traces its roots to a Dutch Reformed church founded in 1654. It had been meeting virtually since 2021 while the building underwent a multimillion-dollar restoration.
The church is believed to have been unoccupied at the time of the fire, and there was no sign of suspicious activity, the FDNY said. The cause remains under investigation by fire marshals.
One firefighter suffered minor injuries and refused medical attention, and no other injuries were reported.
"It's like history is gone," Robert Camacho, a church board member, told WABC-TV.
New York Attorney General Letitia James said the church would receive the grants and government support needed to rebuild.
The church's pastor, James Stewart, said the church had completed major restoration work on the steeple a few years before the fire.
"It's a devastating loss emotionally,” Stewart told WABC-TV. “But we know that the church is more than just building, it's people."
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