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From: NJNYRR AT aol DOT com
Date: Sat, 6 Apr 2002 02:18:49 EST
Subject: Fwd: Nostalgia for Burning Warehouse in Jersey City
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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.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

www.jclandmarks.org


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


More information:

jerseycitytours@hotmail.com





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