BROOKLYN, NY — A year after a five-alarm fire swept through a Red Hook warehouse, artists and small business owners are still measuring what they lost and what they have managed to rebuild. The blaze tore through a building that housed dozens of studios and companies, destroyed inventory, and forced tenants to find new places to work.
For some, the anniversary has marked a chance to look back on a painful stretch of uncertainty. For others, it has brought a welcome sense of progress. Among the businesses finding their footing again is Lanoba Design, whose owners say they are once more restoring and selling furniture from a new Clinton Hill location that opened in April.
Lanoba Design finds a new start in Clinton Hill
David Singh and Lars Noah Balderskilde said the fire wiped out nearly 900 pieces of mid-century modern Danish furniture, along with the company’s ability to operate as it had before. In the days after the blaze, Singh described the experience as devastating, and the couple said it took months before they could feel stable again.
Now, their business has both a showroom and a newly built workshop that they say was customized for their needs. Balderskilde said the move was not a quick recovery, but a process that stretched over seven months before they reached their current point. The couple said they hope their turnaround shows other displaced businesses that rebuilding is possible, even if it is slow.
A fire that displaced artists, tenants and two firefighters
The warehouse fire injured two firefighters and displaced dozens of artists and small businesses that had been working inside the Van Brunt Street building. What had been a shared creative and commercial space became a long cleanup and rebuilding project, leaving many tenants without the kind of affordable setup they had relied on.
The building had been home to a mix of studios and businesses, making the loss larger than a single storefront. For many of the people affected, the fire meant not only damaged property but also the sudden end of studio arrangements, inventory storage and work routines built over years. One year later, the recovery has been uneven, with some tenants reopening elsewhere and others still searching.
Red Hook Business Alliance helps tenants navigate the aftermath
Carly Baker-Rice, who leads the Red Hook Business Alliance, said the group has spent the past year helping people work through practical problems created by the fire. That has included answering questions, connecting business owners and artists with pro bono legal help and insurance support, and helping them as they apply for federal loans.
Baker-Rice said the emotional and financial paths have diverged. Some people have moved on and feel relief at having a new beginning, she said, while others remain frustrated because they still have not found replacement space. The difference reflects how hard it has become in New York City to secure affordable work areas similar to what many tenants had in the warehouse.
Artists gather for healing, remembrance and shared loss
Over the summer, Samantha de Maryela-Schwartz organized a community healing event in Red Hook that gave impacted artists a place to remember what was lost. People brought photographs of their old studios and artwork that did not survive the fire, turning the gathering into a shared record of the creative community that had been inside the warehouse.
De Maryela-Schwartz said she lost nearly all of her own work, including paintings, sculptures and sketches. Only two watercolors that had been in her apartment were spared. She said the low-cost studio arrangements at the warehouse were rare, recalling a monthly share of $350 for a corner of space that she and others could spread out in and use creatively.
The warehouse remains under repair as rebuilding continues
The Red Hook Business Alliance says remediation work is still underway at the warehouse on Van Brunt Street. Officials have not said when that work will be finished, but they have said the facade of the historic building has been preserved.
In the future, the structure is expected to be built out into usable space again. For now, the anniversary stands as a marker of how recovery has unfolded in stages: some businesses have reopened, some artists are still displaced, and the building itself remains part of an active repair process. The owners of Lanoba Design said their own progress came through persistence, and they want that message to carry beyond their own experience.
