Throwback Thursday: Newsroom and post office are enveloped in flames

Throwback Thursday: Newsroom and post office are enveloped in flames

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Firefighters tackle a blaze at the post office building on Main Street, which also housed the Port Jefferson Record. Photo from Port Jefferson Village archive

A post office and a newsroom went up in flames 68 years ago, in a fire that gutted a prominent three-story brick building in downtown Port Jefferson.

Firefighters tackle a blaze at the post office building on Main Street, which also housed the Port Jefferson Record. Photo from Port Jefferson Village archive
Firefighters tackle a blaze at the post office building on Main Street, which also housed the Port Jefferson Record. Photo from Port Jefferson Village archive

According to the village’s historical photo archive, the fire at 202 Main Street broke out on the Tuesday morning of Jan. 20, 1948, and engulfed the U.S. Post Office, the Port Jefferson Record newspaper office, a tailor shop, a law firm, the office of the Suffolk County Council of the Boy Scouts of America, the Brookhaven Town Special Sessions Court and five families’ apartments.

Before it burned in the blaze, the building, located on the west side of the street, had been in the village for more than three decades. Construction began in 1911, according to the village archive, and it was finished the following year. The three-story structure was made of brick from the Dyett Sand-Lime Brick Company.

The Port Jefferson Fire Department got help from two neighboring departments to put out the fire, which took into the afternoon.