A prominent piece of New York City’s military history in Rockaway will soon be no more.
The National Park Service is demolishing Fort Tilden’s building T-9, meaning this will be the final summer that the dilapidated structure, a familiar sight to many beachgoers, will stand. The building was first constructed during World War I to service trains that shuttled supplies around the Army installation.
The Army turned the site over to the National Park Service in the 1970s. For many years it wasn’t bordered by a fence. The building’s striking appearance, crumbling staircases and shattered windows beckoned people on their way to the beach.
The building’s 5,900 square foot interior was slowly covered in graffiti over the years.
The military hangar in 2014, before a fire finished it off.
Hannah Frishberg
The building was one of several to host installations as part of the “Rockaway!” art festival series put on by MoMA PS1. In 2014, Patti Smith used the space for her exhibit Resilience of a Dreamer, an homage to the hardiness of Rockaway, which had been ravaged by Hurricane Sandy two years earlier.
A fire gutted the building last year, destroying any hopes of preserving the structure. It took around 100 firefighters two hours to get the two-alarm fire under control.
The park service had hoped to work with the community to rehabilitate the structure but the fire caused too much damage, according to a statement from the government agency, which oversees the building and nearby beaches.
“It’s sad New York is losing this unique relic from World War I,” said Kevin Fitzpatrick, who wrote a book about New York City’s connection to World War I.
While he says he doesn’t doubt the need for demolition after the fire, Fitzpatrick said more could have been done to preserve the building.
“This is nearly demolition by neglect,” he said. “A real loss to the region, and one less link to our activity in WWI.”
The National Park Service said its removing hazardous material from the site before demolishing it.
Stephen Rex Brown
Lifelong Breezy Point resident Tom Sullivan said the former military base had a commanding presence during his youth because he knew he would one day enlist.
“As a young kid aspiring to join the army someday… it was a military base,” said Sullivan, who remembered running through the building with friends and scrambling over the nearby bunkers, which decades earlier held massive 16-inch guns and missiles. Sullivan served three decades in the military.
“I’ve been back there fairly recently, about three months ago to take a look. I was still able to get in between the fence,” said Sullivan, who is now 52 and running for his local state Assembly seat.
Crews are now working to remove hazardous material from the site before it will be fully demolished, according to National Parks Service spokesperson Daphne Yun.
It’s not clear exactly when the final demolition will get underway.
“It certainly has to come down before it falls down,” Sullivan said.