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Rockwood & Company shipping department fire

1919 firesBuilding fires in New York CityFactory firesFloods in the United StatesFood processing disasters
Industrial fires and explosions in the United StatesMay 1919 eventsUse American English from August 2022Use mdy dates from August 2022
Industries of War Cocoa MANUFACTURE OF CHOCOLATE AND COCOA. Shipping. Rockwood and Company, Brooklyn, New York NARA 31487983 (cropped)
Industries of War Cocoa MANUFACTURE OF CHOCOLATE AND COCOA. Shipping. Rockwood and Company, Brooklyn, New York NARA 31487983 (cropped)

On May 12, 1919, a fire broke out in the shipping department of the Rockwood & Company chocolate factory complex on Flushing Avenue in Brooklyn. At around 1 am, materials and products stored on the second floor of the department are suspected to have caught fire by spontaneous combustion. The New York Fire Department were unable to save the building but prevented the spread of the fire to the rest of the plant. Firefighting water washed a mixture of molten chocolate and butter out onto neighbouring streets where it blocked storm drains and caused a flood sufficient to "float a rowboat for two blocks". Local children crowded to the site to taste the mixture. The fire was extinguished by around 11 am and caused damage in excess of $75,000 (equivalent to $1,172,217 in 2021).

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Rockwood & Company shipping department fire (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Rockwood & Company shipping department fire
Washington Avenue, New York Brooklyn

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N 40.6975 ° E -73.968055555556 °
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Washington Avenue 40
11205 New York, Brooklyn
New York, United States
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Industries of War Cocoa MANUFACTURE OF CHOCOLATE AND COCOA. Shipping. Rockwood and Company, Brooklyn, New York NARA 31487983 (cropped)
Industries of War Cocoa MANUFACTURE OF CHOCOLATE AND COCOA. Shipping. Rockwood and Company, Brooklyn, New York NARA 31487983 (cropped)
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Wallabout, Brooklyn
Wallabout, Brooklyn

Wallabout is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Brooklyn that dates back to the 17th century. It is one of the oldest areas of Brooklyn, in the area that was once Wallabout Bay but has largely been filled in and is now the Brooklyn Navy Yard. The name Wallabout comes from the 17th century, when a group of Walloons, French-speaking Protestants from what is now Belgium, settled along the nearby bay. They called it “Waal-bogt,” or “bend in the harbor.” It is a mixed use area with an array of old wood-frame buildings, public housing, brick townhouses and warehouses. It is bounded by Navy Street to the west, the Brooklyn Navy Yard and Flushing Avenue to the north, Myrtle Avenue to the south and Marcy Avenue to the east. In the early 1800s, however, Wallabout was just a village inside of the town of Brooklyn. The Brooklyn we know today was divided up into six towns: Brooklyn, Gravesend, Flatlands, Flatbush, New Utrect, and Bushwick. Wallabout was one of the villages in the town of Brooklyn, bordering other villages in Brooklyn, like Bedford and Gowanus. But over time as Brooklyn became more industrialized, the borders shrank, and Wallabout was fitted just outside the Brooklyn Navy Yard. The Lefferts-Laidlaw House was built about 1840 and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1985. The Wallabout Historic District was added in 2011 and the Wallabout Industrial Historic District in 2012. Wallabout includes four public housing projects: The Marcy Houses, The Raymond V. Ingersoll Houses, the Walt Whitman Houses and the Farragut Houses. The neighborhood's name is rarely used anymore, being split into Fort Greene, Clinton Hill, and Bedford Stuyvesant. Wallabout was originally inhabited by the Brooklyn Navy Yard workers. Many of the historic row houses were built by the navy yard workers as well.