(erielack) Fwd: Nostalgia for Burning Warehouse in Jersey City

[NJNYRR_@_aol.com]

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More on the Union Terminal (DL&W/ E-L customer)

Michael Sheehy
"Summit Park Station" NJNYRR/ Erie MP 34
New Hempstead, NY

njnyrr.homestead.com 
An online history project (in progress) detailing the significant effect of 
the NJ&NY RR and the Erie Piermont Branch on the development of communities 
in Bergen County, NJ and Rockland County, NY and its industrial heritage. 



      Burned-Out Warehouse Was Like A Member of the Family
      

03/28/02


      By Helene Stapinski
      

Newhouse News Service

(Jersey City, NJ) -- As with all terrible news about Hudson County, the 
call came from my mother.

"The Cold Storage is burning!" she shrieked, barely needing a phone, 
just eight miles away in Jersey City.

I was in Brooklyn, getting ready for a two-river crossing to her 
apartment to drop off my son for a weekend sleepover. I would have to 
pass the Cold Storage warehouse on my way out of the Holland Tunnel. It 
was the big, red building to the left of the inbound tunnel's mouth.

She called not only to warn me about the flames and the potential 
traffic snarl but also to mourn the warehouse, which was practically a 
member of our dysfunctional family.

The Union Terminal Cold Storage loomed over our lives, as it did over 
the thousands of drivers who passed it each day, staring at it as they 
waited in rush-hour traffic, wondering what went on in that seven-story, 
red brick behemoth.

My father had worked there for 41 years, standing on a cold platform and 
checking the frozen food that went from the trucks into the freezer and 
then back out again to fancy restaurants in the region. It was his job 
to make sure everything made it in.

Of course, not everything did. Some of the food wound up in our freezer 
at home.

We were the only working-class family in Jersey City with a steady diet 
of lobster tails and prime rib. Thanks to Daddy and the Cold Storage.

Every year when I was a kid, we would have a Halloween party and Daddy 
would bring home dozens of Sara Lee cupcakes. But the hit of the party 
was the big chunk of dry ice he brought with him, which we placed in 
water and made smoke for my frightened party guests.

Daddy's swag was the least of the problems at the warehouse. In the 
1970s, dozens of canned hams disappeared during the night shift when 
some glutton with a truck pulled up and made a major haul. A few years 
later, a foreman affiliated with the Gambino crime family was hired 
because of a series of Bonanno family truck hijackings there.

And then there were the strikes. Daddy and his co-workers were Teamsters 
and often found themselves out of work, walking the picket line. Those 
union actions meant not only a missed paycheck but an empty freezer for 
my family. In 1986, Daddy was out on strike so long, I took a semester 
off from college and got a job as a secretary.

When the strike was over, I went back to my classes, but Daddy was never 
really the same. He was getting sick and tired of the Cold Storage, 
growing too old to stand on that chilly platform. Just a few months back 
on the job, Daddy died of a heart attack.

That's when things really went downhill for the Cold Storage, as if 
Daddy's death had cursed it once and for all. Soon after he died, the 
warehouse was closed when an ammonia leak from the cooling system 
sickened a bunch of Holland Tunnel toll collectors.

When the building closed for good, nobody bothered to remove the 10 
million pounds of frozen food inside. And soon, decaying frogs' legs, 
fish and squid started stinking up the Holland Tunnel approach ramp. The 
mess was hauled out on a particularly hot August day. But the odor lived 
on, like a ghost in a haunted mansion.

For almost two years, you could still smell that wretched odor. 
Commuters were forced to roll up their windows on the Holland Tunnel 
toll plaza not just because of the smell but because of the flies and 
rats that invaded the tollbooths.

It turned out there was one last freezer that had never been emptied 
because of a 3-foot ice floe that had frozen outside its door. Thousands 
of rats had gnawed through the ice and the 6-inch layer of insulation. 
They gorged themselves on the thawed fish inside and died of food 
poisoning.

Guys in moon suits were called in to clean up the site. The president of 
the Cold Storage was arrested, but he was released on $500,000 bail when 
he put up his New Milford house to pay for the cleanup and the $10,000 
extermination bill.

A few years ago, a Jersey City trucking magnate named Jerry Mecca bought 
the building and painted his company name in big white letters on its 
side. Beneath his name, though, "Union Terminal Cold Storage" lingered 
stubbornly in raised letters, reminding everyone of the building's true 
identity.

Mecca, who died in December, never got the warehouse up and running, but 
a small crowd of homeless people used the Cold Storage for shelter.

Last weekend, as I made my way out of the tunnel and into Jersey, I got 
one last glimpse of the building and one last whiff.

It was the smell of smoke.

The fire my mother had called to tell me about grew worse and worse, the 
warehouse's cork insulation spreading thick black smoke and eventually 
closing the tunnel. Firefighters, spooked by the World Trade Center 
disaster, refused to venture inside the warehouse. You couldn't blame them.

Like thousands of other drivers, I got stuck in traffic for over an hour 
on Saturday because of the Cold Storage. The backup was so awful, I 
finally parked my car in Jersey City and took the train back to 
Brooklyn, cursing the warehouse along the way.

I know I'll never see the warehouse in one piece again. As with most 
relatives who torment you, I'm mostly relieved. But as awful as it was, 
it was a constant, always right there, whenever I left Jersey City. And 
every time I returned home again.

I'm afraid I'll actually miss it.

Editor's note: A former Jersey Journal reporter, Helene Stapinski is the 
author of "Five-Finger Discount: A Crooked Family History," a memoir of 
growing up in Hudson County [Jersey City specifically]. The paperback 
version has just been released [and is available in local bookstores or 
online at Amazon.com].

Copyright 2002 The Jersey Journal. All Rights Reserved.

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Visit the Jersey City Landmarks Conservancy's web site at:

www.jclandmarks.org <http://www.jclandmarks.org>


      Coming June 2002: "Five-Finger Discount Walking Tour"
      

More information:

jerseycitytours_@_hotmail.com <mailto:jerseycitytours@hotmail.com>





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