Many Chinese American artifacts recovered after fire

The president of New York's Museum of Chinese in America, or MOCA, said on Wednesday that she is "optimistic" about salvaging many of the 85,000 historical artifacts stored in its off-site archives ravaged by a fire after 200 intact boxes were recovered.

Nancy Yao Maasbach said that she and her team on Wednesday had begun the process of retrieving and removing some of the precious historical items stored in a building in Manhattan's Chinatown following a devastating fire that ripped through it last week.

The fire that tore through the redbrick and brownstone building at 70 Mulberry Street at 8.45 pm on Jan 23 destroyed the top floors and the roof.

Maasbach said: "What I saw today and what Yue Ma, the director of collections, saw ... we were smiling at each other every time we took out something. It was like Christmas! We kept saying 'Oh my goodness.'"

"I'm really optimistic that what we saw today is in pretty good shape, and I cannot say enough about Yue Ma and Kevin Chu (MOCA collections manager) and our collections, they're amazing! They are the super people of archival preservation, and I think even the Department of Records was surprised by the quality of the work, and that made me even happier!"

The artifacts at MOCA range from photo albums to immigrant tickets documenting the Chinese presence in the United States. At least 25 boxes recovered on Wednesday have been sent to Allentown, Pennsylvania, where they will be "stabilized and then freeze-dried", said Maasbach.

Another 150 boxes were sent to the museum on 215 Centre Street in Chinatown, where 25 volunteers repositioned them and put them in new boxes. Maasbach said she hopes to get the rest of the items out "as soon as possible".

Eight firefighters and a 59-year-old man were injured in the Jan 23 blaze. The cause of the fire is still not known. The New York Police Department said that the fire was not "criminal", and an investigation by city Fire Department marshals is ongoing.

There were widespread fears that more than 40 years of Chinese American history were wiped out in the devastation. The MOCA archives were in three rooms located on the second floor. That area sustained damage from water and soot. Fortunately, 40,000 items from the archive already had been digitized.

New York City Council member Margaret Chin, who represents the area, said at a news conference on Wednesday that a coalition of New York City agencies and officials, including Mayor Bill de Blasio's office, the Department of Buildings, Fire Department commissioner, the Department of Citywide Administrative Service commissioner, the Chinese American Planning Council, the Department of Cultural Affairs and the Police Department's 5th Precinct, have banded together to support efforts to salvage and rebuild.

"It is very important to the Chinese community for us to rebuild,"Chin said. "This building has been around for over 100 years."

Chin said that upon hearing of the fire,"I was just devastated. … I was very concerned about MOCA's artifacts. That's our history, so we cannot lose it!"

The building housing the archives, formerly Public School 23, is owned by the city and was home to several other organizations, including the Chinatown senior center run by the Chinese American Planning Council, Careers Made Possible, H.T. Chen & Dancers company, and the United East Athletics Association.

Wayne Ho, CEO of the Chinese American Planning Council, said that the council was using temporary premises to cater to the elderly.

Hong Shing Lee, executive director of Careers Made Possible, said his offices located on the top three floors, along with the fourth floor, sustained the most fire damage. He said the Fire Department told him there was no "timeline for when they could get back in".