CHURCH’S ‘CURSED’ NEIGHBOR
Next-door fire in Feb., too
East Villagers are blaming a “cursed” building that has now caught fire twice this year for the inferno that spread to a historic next-door church Saturday, as sorrowful services with a message of hope resumed online Sunday.
“You start to feel like there’s a curse,” blogger Jeremiah Moss told The Post of the fire at 48 E. 7th St. that consumed neighboring Middle Collegiate Church.
“We’re all wondering about arson. It’s disturbing. It really increases the sense of vulnerability,” he said.
Rev. Jacqui Lewis broke down in tears during a livestreamed service as she mourned the church’s destruction and reflected on the memories and important events that shaped its inclusive congregation.
She was accompanied by more than a dozen choir members who serenaded grieving viewers from their apartments in a choreographed musical number.
The East Village congregation had been in two other Manhattan locations since 1729. The church destroyed Saturday was built in 1892.
The shuttered restaurant Via Della Paca at 48 E. 7th St. was also damaged, and residents at the Women’s Prison Association’s Hopper Home on 110 Second Ave. were safely evacuated but displaced.
“We don’t know [how the fire started]. That’s being investigated,” Lewis preached. “But I’m so sad about it. And I’m mad about it . . . Out of these ashes, out of our grief, something is going to emerge that will surprise and delight us.”
Lewis promised the church would rebuild.
Religious leaders at the service discussed how members had held the community together through the AIDS crisis, and how the church built and supported a multiracial congregation that grew from 400 people to some 1,400.
The vacant building where the blaze broke out also was the scene of an accidental fire in February, and the church is steps away from the site of a deadly gas blast that rocked the neighborhood in 2015.
Fire marshals have not said how Saturday’s fire began. They were also looking into whether New York’s Liberty Bell, housed in the church’s tower, could be salvaged.