358-360 East 8th Street | Block : 377 | Lot #11

Description & Building Alterations

A six-story New Law tenement with ground floor stores once stood here. It was built in 1902 and designed by Sass & Smalheiser for Adolph Newman of 362 East 8th Street. According to tax photos, the lot was vacant in the 1980s, although no garden appears.

The lot is now a community garden known as the Marty Celic Fireman’s Memorial Garden.  The garden pays homage to the memory of Celic (1952-1977), a young member of Ladder Company 18 who lost his life fighting a fire in the former tenement.

On July 2, 1977, at 3:10 P.M., a fire broke out on the fifth floor of an abandoned building on this site.  When the firefighters arrived, the blaze was spreading up the building. After the men entered the building, the teenager who had started the fire went back in and set another fire, on the second floor, trapping the firemen in the blazing structure.  Ladder Company 11 raised its rescue platform to the fifth-floor window, and the firemen had to crawl onto the fire escape and jump to the “cherry picker.” Struggling through smoke and with heavy equipment on his back, Marty Celic missed the cherry picker and fell 70 feet to the ground.  He was taken to Bellevue Hospital, where he died eight days later, on July 10, 1977.

Click HERE to read more about this garden and the fire on our blog Off the Grid.