Fire hits neighborhood's heart
 ‘‘Henry’’ Xiong Hu walked past the gutted shops yesterday. Among them was Ancient Moon, a jewelry shop where he worked for his sister. (David L. Ryan) |
WATERTOWN -- Boris Taitsel shuffled up to Susan Sidiropoulos yesterday outside the smoldering wreckage of their stores, mourning the loss of businesses that had become neighborhood staples and, for them, homes away from home.
"So much of our lives we put into the bakery," said Sidiropoulos, who has owned Lilly's Cafe and French Pastries for 16 years. "The kids used to come after school and do their homework. That bakery put three kids through college."
Taitsel, an optician who is the owner of Aquidneck Optical a couple doors down, was asleep around 1 a.m. when he got the call telling him his business had burned. A Russian immigrant who arrived in America 29 years ago, Taitsel has owned the store for 20 years.
"I ran it myself," Taitsel said, as he looked over at Sidiropoulos. "I got my coffee from her every day."
"I got my glasses from him," she responded.
Theirs were among seven small businesses devastated by a four-alarm fire that raged late Tuesday down the 100 block of Galen Street near the center of Watertown.
Yesterday, owners, customers, and neighborhood residents milled in the street hugging and staring woefully at the debris.
Fire Chief Mario Orangio said the cause of the fire is under investigation. Orangio said a crew from
While no one was injured in the blaze, it was so severe that firefighters had to be evacuated from the burning businesses shortly after they arrived. Fire officials spent much of yesterday inspecting and securing the building before allowing fire investigators inside to begin gathering evidence inside.
"We're pumping water from the basement and making sure the building is sound to go in," Orangio said. "We had to evacuate the building last night because the floors and ceiling collapsed. We switched to a defensive attack."
He said several other business nearby were left without power yesterday morning. Fire investigators asked NStar to shut down power on the block so that officials working at the scene of the fire wouldn't be electrocuted.
The fire appeared to have started at the bakery, which is the closest of the damaged businesses to the manhole where NStar was working, Orangio said. The bakery appeared to have sustained far more damage than businesses at the other end of the street. Tangled wires and pipes littered the bakery's floor yesterday, and the roof had caved in.
Sidiropoulos's daughter Kristen worked at the bakery with her mother and hoped to run it one day. She said the bakery is famous for its strawberry shortcake.
"If we do five cakes in a day, at least three will be strawberry shortcakes," she said with teary eyes. "We make it the same way always. It's two layers of vanilla layer cake with whipped cream and strawberries."
Reid Shanabrook, 6, got the store's specialty for his first birthday from his grandfather and has eaten the bakery's croissants almost every day since, said his mother, Celeste Ignacio. Whenever Paula Guity needed a boost, she left her job at a technology firm on Galen Street for an apricot croissant and a cup of tea at Lilly's. Tony Maglio, who lives a block away from the bakery, craves the French pastries.
Yesterday, all three customers stood transfixed in front of the gutted building. Sidiropolous said she plans to reopen the bakery.
A few doors down, near the front of the Bus Stop Market, a burned gumball machine sat next to the store's blown-out windows. But racks of potato chips and a
Mohammad Asif, the owner of Bus Stop, stood talking about the loss with his customers and good friends, Ron Murphy and his 15-year-old son, Blake. Blake Murphy has bought Doritos from Asif since he was a child and had grown so close to the immigrant from Pakistan that when he caught a striped bass last year, he presented it to the fish-loving merchant as a gift to cook for dinner.
"I go five times a day," Ron Murphy said. "I'll shovel the snow. He doesn't have to ask. He's good to my kid. . . . We'd lose a good neighbor if he didn't show up."
Asif said he hopes to rebuild the business he started seven years ago.
"I work 16 hours every day to raise my family," he said. "My business is worth $200,000. Without that where do I go?"
Globe correspondent Cyra K. Master contributed to this report. Suzanne Smalley can be reached at ssmalley@globe.com.
