When she heard the news of a fire at the building where the Museum of Chinese in America keeps its 85,000-item archive Thursday night, the museum's president Nancy Yao Maasbach raced over to watch firefighters battling the growing blaze.
As firehoses doused the burning building at 70 Mulberry Street throughout the night, Maasbach thought of the effects of water damage and mold to the priceless items in their collections.
"We were so tempted to just try to get in there yesterday and they thought we were mad, crazy mad," Maasbach said in an interview Friday morning, as she stood outside the building where firefighters were still working to contain the last remnants of the five-alarm fire.
"But the curator was here, the head of collections was here. The educators were here. We were all just sort of like standing and waiting and hoping that they might be able to let us in," she said. "But it was a big fire."
Fire officials said the fire broke out around 8:45 p.m. Thursday in the upper floors of the five-story building, and the roof collapsed. Nine firefighters and one civilian were injured --the civilian was reportedly rescued from the roof via ladder and was hospitalized for smoke inhalation injuries. None of the injuries are believed to be life-threatening.
Maasbach does not believe the fire reached the second floor where the archives are located, but her greatest fear is "definitely water damage. Then the longer we wait, mold -- any mold that might build up. It's going to be a warm weekend."
The museum, opened 40 years ago, was originally housed in the Mulberry Street building and moved to its current location at 215 Centre Street in 2009, but retained space on the second floor for the archives. While about 40,000 pieces of the archives were digitized, many physical items are irreplaceable, Maasbach said.
According to Maasbach, the archives include "old iron heating metal components that are from hand laundries. There's dresses -- traditional Chinese dresses, cheongsams from the turn of the century. There was just an endless list of priceless family albums, postcards from Chinatown from the early 1900s. I mean, these things are not easily acquired. We have all the movie posters from the theaters that used to be in Chinatown that no longer exist, the ticket stubs from those things. And we have this signage from early restaurants and laundromats in Chinatown and these things are just priceless."
The museum also has a large collection of "Chinese American restaurant menus, which tells the story of early Chinese entrepreneurs in this country who wanted to really cater to the Western palate to be more successful and to be more accepted," she said. "Things like moo goo gai pan, things that I never even knew what dishes they were -- those are American dishes. So if the American narrative understands that the Chinese evolved their palates to be more inclusive, that's why we see such value in those things."
She added that the collections were "a 40-year effort by hundreds of people and families. And it's the only real formal collection that's properly assessed...we're this standout, and it's really well done."
The MOCA archives took the museum decades to collect.
The museum staff did formally conserve many items, she said. "So there are definitely very professional methods that we've used to house and store things...but with this amount of water, it's really hard to protect against. I don't know if anything survives this type of water damage."
Of the recovery effort, she said "we have a window in which we can do this. We've reached out to many, many people -- people at the Met, people at conservation places, recovery places, academics. So everyone's been saying, 'let us know what we can do,' but I'm just really nervous. I mean that we have 85,000 items there. And there are many things that are priceless and not replaceable."
The building itself is also a historical artifact, Maasbach pointed out. It opened in 1893 and used to house PS 23, an elementary school where generations of kids studied - including Councilmember Margaret Chin, who represents the district.
The building also houses nonprofits including the United East Athletics Association, the Chen Dance Center and Chinatown Manpower, a vocational and entrepreneurial assistance center where Maasbach's own mother learned job skills.
"So not only are the archives, the history of Chinatown in that building, and Chinese America, but also it's a historic city building that had an elementary school," she said. "People talk about PS 23 all the time. I mean, 70 Mulberry is the address I would suggest that most people know who have any connection with this neighborhood. Even as a child I went there with my mom to learn her employable skills at Chinatown Manpower -- they teach skills to new immigrants. It has such a deep connection with the Chinese diaspora who come to New York."
"And it's not about the Chinese only in this country," Maasbach added. "This is about the American narrative. And the stories in our collections tell that narrative. And unfortunately, it's still untold and...the museum's made great strides with the support of everyone and their collections and things and it's just such a step back."
