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by THE NEW YORK TIMES
An oven fire in the bakery of a popular epicurean grocery on the Upper East Side consumed it and a rooftop greenhouse last night before 250 firefighters brought the flames under control, fire officials said.
The fire, in the two-story bakery and preparation area of the grocery, Eli's Vinegar Factory, on East 91st Street between First and York Avenues, was reported shortly after 6:30 p.m., after employees on the second floor noticed a fire near an oven, said Assistant Chief Joseph Callan.
The employees tried to put out the fire with a garden hose, Chief Callan said, but it climbed through the oven ducts to the ceiling, where it then spread swiftly to the rooftop and greenhouse, where the store's organic vegetables were grown.
"Fortunately, nobody was hurt," Eli Zabar, the owner of the grocery, said in a telephone interview last night.
The spread of the fire through the roof's crawl space made the task of extinguishing the blaze more complicated for firefighters who were at risk of being crushed by the greenhouse, which partly collapsed, said Francis X. Gribbon, a spokesman for the department.
Firefighters from 60 companies from as far away as Queens and the Bronx were called in as the fire escalated to five alarms, Mr. Gribbon said. Eleven firefighters suffered minor injuries in the blaze, which was brought under control at 9:47 p.m., a Fire Department spokesman said.
The bakery and the greenhouse occupied a two-story building next door to the Vinegar Factory on East 91st Street, which was not damaged in the fire, Mr. Zabar said.
Mr. Zabar said the Vinegar Factory, which opened in 1993 and has about 10,000 sales transactions each week, was open when the fire broke out. About 25 employees working there at the time and all the customers who were inside got out safely.
Mr. Zabar said the bakery building, which was built in the late 1880's or 1890's, was of lesser historical interest than the Vinegar Factory, which was the home of the Baker's Brand factory, where vinegar and mustard were made from 1928 until 1993.
The block, which was attractive to manufacturers in the 1880's because of its proximity to the East River, is also home to apartments and other residences.
The food production housed inside the bakery was essential to the Vinegar Factory, Mr. Zabar said. All the foods sold in the Vinegar Factory are prepared daily on the premises from the kitchens, he said. Fresh dough for pizza was kneaded and baked there, Mr. Zabar said, and tomatoes that topped it grew in the greenhouse gardens, just as they are at his other grocery, Eli's Manhattan on Third Avenue between 80th and 81st Streets.
A New York Times article about the bakery in 2000 described it as a "handyman's fantasy" with a complex system of conveyor belts taking dough to the ovens.
In an interview for that article, Mr. Zabar, who had once described the Vinegar Factory as the ultimate example of recycling, because produce that is not sold is baked into pizzas and other finished foods, said that he loved the idea of using heat from the ovens to moderate the temperature of the tomatoes growing in the rooftop garden.
Mr. Zabar also owns E.A.T., a cafe on Madison Avenue between 80th and 81st Streets, and owns a bread-baking business also housed on East 91st Street, which supplies bread to 600 hotels and restaurants in the city, he said.
Last night, Mr. Zabar said he was considering shifting production to some of his other facilities so that he could reopen the Vinegar Factory as soon as possible.
"All I know is that at about 6 or 6:15 one of my managers smelled smoke and went up to the roof and saw fire in the greenhouse," Mr. Zabar said, adding that he had heard nothing about employees attempting to extinguish the blaze with a garden hose.
Fire marshals were still investigating the scene last night and searching for the fire's cause, Chief Callan said.
Mr. Zabar was able to tour the Vinegar Factory with fire officials and said that the store was unharmed, although it would remain closed for business for the time being.
Patrick Healy contributed reporting for this article.
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