(Note: I’ll address the fire separately today.)

••• “Claiming she has a prior commitment that she cannot break, Councilmember Margaret Chin is declining to participate in this Thursday’s District 1 candidates debate [….] However, the debate will go on as scheduled, at the 55 Washington Square South house of worship, featuring the other three Democrats in the primary-election race: Aaron Foldenauer, Dashia Imperiale and Christopher Marte.” —The Villager

••• What?! Depeche Mode singer Dave Gahan lives in Tribeca? I can sing “Master and Servant” in Spanish, if anyone cares. —New York Post

••• “For over half a century, Cape Dorset, a small Arctic town in the far northeast of Canada, has been a center of Inuit art. The drawings by three generations of Inuit women artists—a mother, her daughter and her granddaughter—now on display at the Museum of American Indian, is but a taste of the extraordinary artistic output produced in this isolated community.” —Tribeca Trib

••• Daytonian in Manhattan digs into the history of 461-469 Greenwich, which includes this tragic episode:

The structure was filled with workers on the afternoon of August 11, 1896, when an explosion occurred on the first floor. Despite George W. DaCunha’s preventative measures, the fire quickly spread upwards. By 3:00 the blaze had grown to a four-alarm inferno, spreading to No. 467, occupied by distillers, candy factories and an umbrella manufacturer.

The rapid spread of the fire cut off the escape of scores of workers. The gruesome scene was repeated in newspapers nationwide. The Salt Lake Herald, on August 12, reported, “The firemen who first reached the scene of the conflagration say they saw a number of men at the windows appealing for help, but before any attempt at rescue could be made they fell back exhausted by the heat and smoke and all are supposed to have perished in the flames.”

Other workers in nearby factories watched in horror. “One young girl, it was said, was seen to approach one of the windows in the burning structure. Before aid could reach her she had fallen back into the seething mass of flames waiting to swallow her up.” The Salt Lake Herald wrote, “From stories told by those who claimed to have been near by when the first alarm was given faces were seen at nearly every window.”

William Gray and James Muller, both workers of the Warren firm, made it to a fire escape, but were trapped and burned to death. Their “charred bodies” remained there for hours while firefighters battled the blaze. It took nine hours and ten minutes for 21 engine companies and 6 hook and ladder companies to get the fire under control. Four workers were dead and at least nine others were severely burned, taken to the nearby Hudson Street Hospital.