Firefighters rescue 9 from historic building

By DAN BENSON
dbenson@journalsentinel.com

Last Updated: Nov. 25, 2002

Port Washington - Firefighters from eight Ozaukee County communities who responded to a Saturday morning fire helped rescue nine of the 23 residents from the building's upper two floors by pulling them out windows or from a second-floor roof on the building's north side.

Historic Building Damaged   Photo/Tom Lynn A 12-hour fire Saturday ravaged the upper levels of this Port Washington building, 200 W. Grand Ave., and destroyed the roof. No one was hurt.   Photo/Tom Lynn Diana Lam and her husband, Richard, have owned the restaurant since 1990. The Lams bought the building in 2000   Quotable   Some have lived there for 15 years or more. They're just like family.   - Diana Lam, building owner

One person was outside the building standing on the first floor restaurant's sign when firefighters rescued him, Port Washington Fire Chief Marc Eernisse said.

No one was injured. The exact cause of the blaze is unknown, but Eernisse said it began in a second-floor sleeping room.

Eernisse said the second and third floors of the building, originally a hotel when it was built in the late 1800s, were largely gutted; the roof of the building was destroyed; and there is extensive water and smoke damage, including in Lam's Chinese restaurant on the first floor.

Firefighters were on the scene until 4 p.m. Saturday, almost 12 hours after the initial call. Departments that responded came from Port Washington, Saukville, Grafton, Cedarburg, Fredonia, Waubeka, Belgium and Newburg, Eernisse said.

The fire burned through portions of the roof, with the rest of it being removed to allow firefighters to reach hot spots inside the building, he said.

"It's pretty bad," Diana Lam said of the extensive water and smoke damage done to the restaurant she has owned with her husband, Richard, since 1990. The Lams bought the building in 2000.

Insurance adjusters were at the scene Monday and state inspectors will become involved at some point because the building is on the National Register of Historic Places, she said.

Her first concern is for the people who lived above her restaurant, she said.

"I feel bad for all the tenants. Now they are homeless," she said.

Almost all the apartments on the top two floors are sleeping rooms, although she said a couple are efficiency apartments that allow cooking.

Many of the rooms offer short-term stays for people seeking temporary low-income housing, often "to help them go through rough times," Lam said.

But some tenants had lived there since before the Lams started their restaurant, she said.

"Some have lived there for 15 years or more," Lam said. "They're just like family."

The Red Cross found temporary shelter for many of the tenants at local motels.

"But they don't know what they're doing because they have no place to go. They all work in Port Washington. They have to be in walking distance of their jobs. They can't move too far away," she said.

"They don't know what will happen because they have no place to go. That's what I'm worried about," she said, adding that many of the residents lost most, if not all, their possessions in the fire.

Built in 1895, the Lams' building was known for years as the Hoffman House Hotel and later as the Haberdashery Pub & Grill. The Queen Anne-style building was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984.

Saturday's fire was the third in Port Washington in the last 16 months, and the second in three months, involving a historic building, all within blocks of each other.

In July 2001, the landmark Smith Bros. Fish Shanty restaurant was closed for weeks by a fire that started in a broiler; 80 customers were in the Shanty at the time.

In September, fire damaged the 113-year-old Friedens Evangelical Church, destroying many of its stained-glass windows and its 90-year-old pipe organ, as well as gutting most of its sanctuary.

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