Rexmere fire
The Rexeme Hotel, a landmark in Stamford, burned to the ground on March 27, 2014.
More than 150 firefighters battled relentless flames in the village of Stamford on Tuesday as the old Rexmere Building, a historical landmark, rapidly burned to the ground.
On its last day, the grand Rexmere hotel building served many purposes: It was home to a caretaker and his family who lived on the first floor; an exciting prospect for the man who was planning to purchase and restore it; and a point of pride for many residents of Stamford and Delaware County.
But all was lost when the statuesque building, which stood at 159 Main St. for more than a century, collapsed after flames destroyed it from the inside out. No injuries were reported, according to the Delaware County Department of Emergency Services.
Stamford Fire Chief A.J. Vamosy called the fire “a nightmare” and said it was the largest structural fire he has seen in his time as a firefighter. Vamosy said his crew was alerted at approximately 10:45 a.m. Don VanEtten, first assistant fire chief, was among the first emergency personnel at the scene, Vamosy said. At first VanEtten did not see anything, Vamosy said, but after looking through a first-floor window, VanEtten noticed smoke and quickly called for assistance.
Within 15 minutes the building was engulfed in flames and gutted, Vamosy said. Because the building was so old and wooden, the flames raced quickly up the walls, he said, spreading speedily from the first floor to the other six.
Vamosy said more than 10 fire departments from Delaware, Otsego, Chenango and Greene counties were called to the blaze, including crews from Hobart, Bloomville, Oneonta, Sidney, Walton, Catskill, Delhi and Middleburgh. Although it was a chaotic and overwhelming scene, Vamosy said, all of the crews did a fantastic job with what they were dealt.
“I can’t thank them enough,” Vamosy said. “I truly appreciate everyone who came and worked so hard.”
Having been fire chief for only 11 months, Vamosy said the whole situation seemed “unreal.”
“What a way to be broken in,” Vamosy solemnly added. “It’s a shame. I never would have thought this would happen.”
As huge plumes of smoke, which were visible for miles along County Route 23, filled the air, water was pumped from several tankers, surrounding hydrants, and the property’s small lake, which was frozen and had to be cut into with chainsaws. Multiple aerial ladders were set up around the fire, Vamosy said.
By 1 p.m. the roughly 50,000-square-foot building was destroyed, Vamosy said, with only its tall chimney remaining.
Two caretakers were living in the building, Vamosy said, but were not there at the time of the fire. Investigators are working to determine the cause of the blaze, he said, and are expected to return to the scene Wednesday. The probe into the cause of the fire is expected to be overseen by the Delaware County Emergency Services Office, Cause and Origin team and state Office of Fire Prevention and Control.
At 8 p.m. Tuesday firefighters were still at the scene, according to Stamford fire department officials, and were set to remain there through the night to put out any hot spots and watch for a rekindle.
Delaware County Undersheriff Craig DuMond said fire investigators found preliminary indications that the blaze ignited on the building’s first floor, on the opposite side of the structure from a caretaker’s apartment. He and his family were not at home at the time the fire broke out, DuMond said. The name of the caretaker was not available Tuesday.
“They really can’t start their investigation until (Wednesday) because the site is still so hot right now,” DuMond said. “They can’t even get in to where they need to pour water on it.”
The structure, which was built in 1898 and served as a hotel for more than 50 years, was just weeks away from being sold to a Manhattan-based artist who wanted to restore and preserve it. The Rexmere had been listed for sale with the asking price of $599,000 and a deal was in the works with a would-be purchaser involved in the art world, said Ray Pucci of Coldwell Banker Timberland Properties in Delhi.
Delaware County Historian Gabrielle Pierce said the buyer, Hunt Slonem, had recently spent more than $100,000 in updates to the building, including antique furniture and drapes. He was planning on turning it into a gallery in which he would display his work and that of other artists.
Local officials confirmed the prospective buyer was Slonem, a renowned Neo-Expressionist artist and collector of Victorian antiques who has rehabilitated several historic properties, including two former plantations in Louisiana. According to a website chronicling the art world, Slonem’s work is featured in many museums throughout the world.
Contacted by The Daily Star at his Manhattan studio, Slonem said, “I was going to make this project my lifetime’s work. I’m really just too devastated right now to speak about it.”
Slonem, 62, had put so much into the building emotionally, Pierce said, and he compared the heartbreak to one felt after losing a family member.
Pierce said the building, which she said was one of her favorite places, foreshadowed the fire when an alarm went off several weeks ago. It was a false alarm that, she said, she was relieved to hear. Pierce said the building was likely insured in preparation for the approaching sale.
“I am utterly shocked,” Pierce said. “We all took such pride in that building.”
The Rexmere was known as “the Queen of the Catskills” at one time, said Pucci, whose company had listed the property. Pucci noted it was not immediately known how the fire will impact the impending sale.
“The attorneys will work that out,” he said. “... The loss of the Rexmere is one less tie to our past. It’s sad that part of our local history is gone. We are advocates for our region and this makes us heartsick. We’re disappointed on many different levels.”
Built in 1898, the seven-story hotel on seven pastoral acres was converted to an educational center in 1965. Its most recent owner is the Catskill Mountain Education Center, which is controlled by a board of directors.
The old hotel was renamed the Cyr Educational Center for the late educator Frank W. Cyr, who was noted for promoting shared services for rural school districts. After the building fell into disrepair, Cyr rescued it and transformed it into the educational center. It was Cyr who pushed for the creation of the BOCES program in Stamford, and some Otsego Northern BOCES administrative offices occupied a portion of the stately building’s space for several years.
Bonita Chase, business manager at the Catskill Mountain Educational Center, said the organization’s trustees were extremely saddened by the loss of the center. The building was a centerpiece for Stamford, she said, and was one of the last great symbols of the golden era of the early and mid-20th century.
“We are very appreciative of the numerous fire companies and emergency personnel who responded today,” Chase said. “Their quick response and dedication was overwhelming. Our board will work with fire investigators in the days ahead to determine a possible cause.”
Stamford Village Mayor Joan Hinman told The Daily Star that she burst into sobs when she learned at about 11 a.m. that the Rexmere was burning down.
“We’ve really been counting on something good for our community happening there,” said Hinman. “When I first heard about this, I couldn’t help but cry … It’s such a shame. It was such a beautiful building.”
In recent years, the property has played host to a wide range of community events, Hinman said, providing a venue for musical entertainment, art shows, local “Pop Up” farmers’ markets and even local high school proms. The mayor said with the loss of the building she still hopes the property can be developed.
“The area around it is just gorgeous,” Hinman said.
Stamford Village Historian Anne Willis, who grew up in Stamford, said she remembers the Rexmere in its “magical” heyday and called it “a treasure.” The building was added to the National Registry of Historical Places more than 20 years ago, she said. Willis recalled taking swimming lessons at the hotel’s pool, which was located near the present site of a Rite-Aid pharmacy. The hotel was considered one of the best in the Catskills and a cultural center, she said, and attracted many vacationing upper-class folks.
“I used to go to the swimming and diving exhibitions as a kid,” Willis said. “There were bathing beauty competitions. They had a live alligator at the pool and every week they would have a show where a man would throw him into the pool and wrestle him out again. People say that was just a myth, but I saw it with my own eyes.”
Willis said Rexmere’s front lawn was the site of one of the area’s first golf games. Its grand lounge and dining room were very impressive, she said.
In recent years, Willis said, the Rexmere was the home of numerous art shows provided by a local art organization, Mount Utsayantha Rural Arts League. Fortunately, she said, the organization recently moved its gallery and headquarters out of the Rexmere and into a Hobart facility.
Velga Kundzins, executive director of the Western Catskills Community Revitalization Corp., said her organization has been working with the seller of the Rexmere and Slonem in completing the sale.
“Obviously, we and the rest of the community are devastated by this,” Kundzins said. “The Rexmere was how people traveling through the area recognized the village of Stamford.”
This video shows the Rexmere building in Stamford engulfed in flames on Tuesday, March 25, 2014.
The fire that destroyed the historic seven-story Rexmere building in Stamford on Tuesday is believed to have started directly above the building’s circuit breaker box on the first floor, an official said Wednesday.
Second Assistant Fire Chief Joe Hornbeck said his fire department, county and state cause-and-origin teams, fire investigation teams and state troopers worked at the scene from 8 a.m. until about 4 p.m. Wednesday. Hornbeck said the cause of the fire is still under investigation and that he was not at liberty to say whether arson could be ruled out.
However, state troopers’ K9 dogs, which have been trained to sniff out fire accelerants such as gasoline or kerosene, have not found any evidence that would point to arson, a source close to the investigation said Wednesday.
Delaware County Undersheriff Craig DuMond confirmed on Wednesday that the point of origin of the blaze was above the circuit breaker box but said he could not give any more details because the investigation is ongoing.
DuMond said the caretaker who was staying in the Rexmere lived in an apartment on the opposite side of the building from where the fire started. The caretaker’s name is Donald Brown, but no contact information could be found for him. Several village officials, including Stamford’s Village Mayor, Joan Hinman, said they had been unaware that anyone was living there. Brown and his family were not home at the time the fire broke out, DuMond said.
Stamford’s Second Assistant Fire Chief, Joe Hornbeck, said members of the Stamford Fire Department are exhausted after working more than 24 hours at the site of the former Rexmere hotel, which was reduced to rubble after the ferocious fire rapidly tore through the massive wooden structure.
Hornbeck said the department finally cleared the scene at about 1:30 a.m. Wednesday, but returned at approximately 5 a.m. for a rekindle. There were two rekindles during the night, he said.
“I managed to grab a couple of hours of sleep today,” Hornbeck said Wednesday, “I feel a little better now.”
Firefighter Al Vamosy, father of Stamford Fire Department’s Chief, A.J. Vamosy, said the 50,000-square-foot building left 7 feet of rubble, which investigators combed through Wednesday.
“We’re all tired,” Al Vamosy said on Wednesday, during a noon lunch break with other investigators. “This was (Stamford’s) second major structure fire this week.”
Vamosy added that the day the Rexmere was destroyed was also, coincidentally, his son’s birthday, but said the fire chief didn’t think much about himself that day.
“Not much of a birthday,” Al Vamosy added, “But he is doing his job.”
The Rexmere had been listed for sale with an asking price of $599,000 and a deal was in the works with would-be buyer Hunt Slonem, a Manhattan-based artist who had recently spent more than $100,000 in updates to the building in hopes of turning it into an art gallery where he could display his work and that of other artists.
According to a website chronicling the art world, Slonem, 62, is best known for large Neo-Expressionist oil paintings of tropical birds inspired by his personal aviary. His work is featured in many museums throughout the world, the website noted.
Slonem, a collector of Victorian antiques who has rehabilitated several historic properties, was distraught when reached for comment at his Manhattan studio on Tuesday, saying he was “too devastated right now to speak about it.”
A receptionist at the artist’s gallery said Wednesday that Slonem was not taking phone calls or making any comments and was “all tied up” for the rest of the day.
Officials were back on Thursday investigating the Stamford site of the former Rexmere hotel, an official said, which was demolished in a ferocious fire on Tuesday.
Director of Delaware County Emergency Services Steve Hood said insurance adjusters spent Thursday probing the area where the 50,000-square-foot building, now a heap of rubble, stood for more than a century.
The cause of the fire is still unknown, Hood said, and the investigation is ongoing. It will likely take several weeks, at least, he said, to determine the exact cause of the blaze.
Hood said the Department of Emergency Services will soon release an official statement with statistics regarding exactly how many fire departments helped battle the huge structure fire. Hood said the response from surrounding fire departments was tremendous.
Said Hood: “There were so many people out there helping.”
One year after Stamford’s historic Rexmere Building rapidly burned to the ground, officials don’t know what caused the inferno.
Despite an extensive investigation, and “quite a few different fire investigators” who scoured the scene day-after-day, what’s “fairly certain” is that the flames originated above the circuit breaker box, said Stamford Fire First Assistant Chief Don VanEtten, who was among the first responders at the scene on that March 25.
“They were able to trace it back to that general area,” VanEtten said Thursday, a day after the anniversary of the fire. “But, when it comes down to it, we just don’t know what actually set it off.”
“No official cause could be determined,” confirmed Steve Hood, director of Delaware County Emergency Services.
Stamford’s fire department, county and state cause-and-origin teams, fire investigation teams and state troopers with K-9 dogs trained to sniff out fire accelerants such as gasoline or kerosene worked vigilantly at the scene to determine a cause.
The Greenville-based insurance agency Eastern Mutual, with which the Rexmere was insured, also investigated at the scene, officials said.
Officials don’t believe it was a case of arson, Stamford Fire Chief A.J. Vamosy said.
“It was the largest fire I’ve ever seen.”
The absence of the statuesque seven-story landmark has meant more than just a missing building to the village of Stamford, several who knew it best said Thursday.
Those we fought the flames on that bitterly cold day were deeply affected, as well, according to VanEtten.
“We talk about it here almost every day,” he said. “It was the largest fire I’ve ever seen, and I think most of the firefighters in the county who were there would agree. We had six aerial trucks and countless fire engines. We were there until the wee hours of the morning.”
By 1 p.m., the roughly 50,000-square-foot “Queen of the Catskills” that stood at 159 Main St. for more than a century had been destroyed from the inside out, with only its tall chimney remaining.
At the scene that day, Vamosy called the fire “a nightmare.” Having been fire chief for only 11 months, the whole situation seemed “unreal,” he said. It also happened to be his birthday.
“What a way to be broken in,” Vamosy said a year ago. “It’s a shame. I never would have thought this would happen.”
More than 24 fire departments and between 300 and 400 firefighters battled the fire, VanEtten recalled.
Crews had been alerted at approximately 10:45 a.m. Within 15 minutes the building was engulfed in flames and gutted, Vamosy said. Because the building was so old and wooden, the flames raced quickly up the walls, spreading speedily from the first floor to the other six.
As huge plumes of smoke, which were visible for miles along County Route 23, filled the air, water was pumped from several tankers, surrounding hydrants, and the property’s small lake, which was frozen and had to be cut into with chainsaws, Vamosy said.
THOSE LEFT BEHIND
On its last day, the grand Rexmere hotel building served many purposes: It was home to a caretaker and his family who lived on the first floor; an exciting prospect for the man who was planning to purchase and restore it; a venue for a local musical group; and a point of pride for many residents of Stamford and Delaware County.
Donald Brown, the building’s former caretaker, was not home at the time of the fire. He lost most of his belongings in the blaze, but is moving on, VanEtten said. He still lives in the area.
“After the fire, I didn’t want to talk to reporters and I feel the same now,” Brown said Thursday.
When it burned, the picturesque Rexmere — which was built in 1898 and served as a hotel for more than 50 years — was just weeks away from being sold to a Manhattan-based artist.
It had been listed for sale with an asking price of $599,000, and a deal was in the works with a would-be purchaser involved in the art world, Hunt Slonem. He had recently spent more than $100,000 in updates to the building, including antique furniture and drapes, and was planning on turning it into a gallery in which he would display his work and that of other artists.
Contacted a year ago by The Daily Star at his Manhattan studio, Slonem said, “I was going to make this project my lifetime’s work. I’m really just too devastated right now to speak about it.”
After its hotel days, the building was renamed the Cyr Educational Center for the late educator Frank W. Cyr, who was noted for promoting shared services for rural school districts. After the building fell into disrepair, Cyr rescued it and transformed it into an educational center. It was Cyr who pushed for the creation of the BOCES program in Stamford, and some Otsego Northern BOCES administrative offices occupied a portion of the stately building’s space for several years.
At the time of the fire, the Rexmere was owned by a nonprofit organization called the Catskill Mountain Educational Center, which still owns and maintains the accompanying seven pastoral acres of property. The organization provides assistance to the ONC BOCES and component school districts in expanding and improving educational and cultural opportunities.
Bonita Chase, business manager at the Catskill Mountain Educational Center, said the organization worked quickly to ensure the property was secured after the fire, bringing in LCP Group, Inc., from Vestal to complete the cleanup. As part of the salvage of the property, the center columns of the building were spared and taken to the Railroad Station in Stamford at the request of the Stamford Historical Society, she said.
“Skip Heath was kind enough to facilitate their recovery with the assistance of volunteers from Boyle Construction,” Chase added.
LOOKING AHEAD
While nothing is planned for the property, the Catskill Mountain Educational Center will continue to maintain the property and is working with Keller Williams Realty agents to offer the site for sale, according to Chase.
“We’re working on finalizing those details now,” Chase said. “CMEC recognizes the potential benefit to the economy of Stamford and the surrounding area if the property were to be developed. Furthermore, the income for the sale of the property would be used to fulfill the mission of our organization. ... Specifically, we will be using the money to offer small grants and scholarships to the rural school districts in the Otsego Northern Catskills BOCES region.”
The Rexmere provided visitors and natives “a window into past hotel architecture and a long-gone era of past time in the Catskills,” Chase said.
In its second lifetime, the Cyr Center was a special resource that provided a setting to assist area schools and communities, Chase continued. It provided an educational setting for students, offices and meeting spaces for ONC BOCES and our component schools; housed area professional and student artwork; served as a setting for various music performances for the surrounding communities, and often provided a setting for weddings and high school proms.
“As the Cyr Center provided assistance in so many ways to so many people, the loss is pervasive and will be felt for a long time,” Chase said.
“It was definitely a big part of the history of Stamford,” said Marianne Mukai, business manager for the Friends of Music of Stamford NY, Inc., which for 27 years used the Rexmere as a venue for its concerts.
“We had hoped the sale of the building ensured its presence for generations to come, but it was not to be,” Mukai said Thursday. “We were very fortunate to have moved our grand piano out of the space just before the fire because the building was to be sold.”
The Friends of Music concerts are now “graciously” hosted by the Robinson Terrace Skilled Nursing Facility, located across the highway from the former Rexmere site, Mukai said. But concert-goers and musicians miss the ambiance of the Rexmere.
“We were associated strongly with the building and we miss it a lot,” Mukai said. “This whole community misses it a lot. It was an elegant place. But it will live on in our many happy memories of being in the building.”
