A huge fire in New York City completely destroyed a historic church, which was built back in 1891.
The fire started inside a vacant building in Manhattan’s East Village early Saturday morning before it quickly spread to Middle Collegiate Church, a Protestant church with more than 1,200 congregants.
Dozens of firefighters rushed to the scene to save the place of worship, but it has been gutted by the flames.
A commanding officer said to New York state Senator Bard Hoylman that the church may collapse, ABC-7 reported.
Minister Amanda Ashcraft said that “beautiful Tiffany stain glass windows have been destroyed” and the sanctuary inside the house of worship is “not in good shape.”
“This is a horribly sad day for our congregation and for this neighborhood,” she added.
“I see a gutted building full of smoke,” Rev. Jacqui Lewis, senior minister for public theology and transformation, said, the New York Times reported.
“The sanctuary is gone, absolutely gone.”
Police officers on the scene are trying to determine the cause of the blaze.
According to reports, the five-story building where the fire erupted has been empty since February.
The fire also spread to an apartment building where residents were sleeping. Fortunately, all the people escaped without any injuries.
One resident said to ABC-7: “I opened the door to my room, I’m on the top floor too so I didn’t know where the fire was coming from, smoke all in the stairwells, hallways and I was like we gotta get out, we gotta get out.
“So we started running down the stairs and firefighters were coming up … luckily, our whole building got out first.”
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Replaced!