First, our heartfelt thanks to the many, many of you who since the fire have sent kind words or packages, kept us in mind and in prayers, and offered at least a hundred varieties of help. The ways that people have found to reach out to us have been myriad, creative, and touching; ALL ways have helped. With particular gratitude, we thank the writers and callers who expressed their understanding sympathy for the loss of shopcats Sessa and Thalia. Both have been memorialized in ways apt and beautiful; they are being remembered in so many places, literally around the world, that their friends would be awed as well as pleased to see the list. There will be a bit more about the cats toward the end of this message, and you will be glad to read it.
At
this writing, almost six weeks after the fire, we can report that First, a report as to the books: Neither
fire nor water reached the main, front bookrooms, the pamphlet area, or our
several book-filled porches. There was significant smoke impact in some of these
places — soiling, lingering scent, or both — but four days’
worth of page-by-page attention by technicians from Philadelphia's Conservation
Center for Art and Historic Artifacts, working with Nancy Nitzberg of Book Care,
perfectly recovered nearly all denizens of the main bookrooms, and some six
boxes of other survivor books that had gone immediately to Balfor for freeze-drying
came back in amazingly hopeful states. The conservation work took place in the
garages here at the Arsenal that those of you who attended last year’s
“Flag Day Garage Sale” will be able to visualize, on a series of
tables partly loaned to us by one of our neighbors here at the “A,”
the Maritime Academy Charter School. There were some sad losses discovered indeed,
even in these areas farthest from the heart of the inferno, but nearly all the
contents of our good-sized double-bay rare books bookcases (the mission-style
ones, again for anyone visualizing) proved able to go back in good condition
to their former places, along with the contents of the manuscripts closet and
the special books from the glass-fronted sideboard shelves — this, of
course, after all the bookcases were cleaned and deodorized and moved
into the new temp-quarters. Things from the pamphlet room are still boxed, but
the boxes are numbered and we can find them with only a little extra effort.
Looking at the books from the sideboard, which uniquely in all the building
were not smoke-affected, we saw how useful those “old fashioned”
glass cases must have been, in eras when wood- and coal-heated homes were chronically
sooty.
Of these luckiest, furthest
from the fire books, some even got to go to the New York Book Fair, just three
weeks later — and some were lucky enough to achieve wonderful new
homes there. This was good not just because we were pleased for the books, and
because cash flow is good; but because it was at that point wonderful just to
do something so NORMAL as go to a book fair and sell a book! With the rare-books part of things thus beginning to be under control, we have
started to clean the reference library — all ten cases of it, plus the
cabinet for the michofiche (which seems to have survived though the reader didn’t);
and we will soon start seriously on the “medium rare” books (from
the oak cases in the alcove between the east rare book room and the Americana
porch) and on the something-like-28 cases of “SessaBks” (those multifarious
things that were on the porches and in the back hall space on the first floor,
beyond the kitchen and past the bathroom). These “good old used,”
mostly-scarce, and even maybe heading-for-rare books have just had to
wait their turn though it's been dreadfully hard to watch them do that!
There is not much to report here, yet, but we promise to keep you posted as
to how efforts and results with these books may go. They will not fit into #8
with us and the rarities, but we have taken space for them to be shelved close
by, until we can carry them back home to #4.
As to one category of books only were we too optimistic in our first report.
We believed, Cynthy particularly believed, based on where they were at the time
of the fire, that nearly all the books actively “in process” would
be all right with only minimal conservation or reconditioning. But these
30- or 40-some books — which had been mostly in C’s office, variously
lined up for final editing of their descriptions, awaiting some little point
of research “at the first spare moment,” having their pictures taken
or developed for the website, and/or receiving special attentions in connection
with that upcoming book fair — nearly ALL of these have turned out to
require one degree or another of real rehab. We are not entirely sure, as yet,
when/where/how they will get it — but, even of these, most will be all
right in the end, and we confess that some already seem to us to be the more
lovable, simply in our appreciation of their having survived.
It is a decidedly happy thing
to note that although a large number of our rarest and most valuable uncatalogued
books were destroyed with the destruction of the upstairs rear office, at #4,
we are not entirely bereft of our stores for the future. David had
kept some number of books and manuscripts at home, to work on; some very good
things were off with binders; and a great many volumes were safe and oblivious
a full mile away from the fire, in the “stacks” at our old premises
which are now used as a kind of warehouse. So we do have these to draw on, going
forward, and we appreciate both the kindness and the understanding of those
of you who were worried about this specifically.
Shortly after the fire,we took ALL our books down from the bookselling databases
as we could not be sure of what could or could not be supplied, or supplied
in the condition described. We are now putting them back up, gradually, as seems
safe; and at this writing about 5000 items, maybe half the normal total, are
again searchable / findable / sendable via ILAB, ABE, Biblio, or the “Search”
button at our own website. (If you would like us to email you notice when we
re-post more books, please
just ask.) We have been slowed, sometimes stalled, on production of illustrated
descriptions for the website, but people are still landing in the cybershop
to discover that since the fire Hayce and I have gotten between 30 and 40 fresh
entries into Newest Arrivals.
We expect we will roar back on that activity, soon!
Next, the bottom line as to business:
Most importantly and amazingly, our computer server and two
back-ups entirely survived! The server was greasy and heat-stained and smelly
and cranked up only creakily, but it worked. Though it took several days to
get actual access to the book database, which was visibly there on the drive
but not letting us in, our client, inventory, accounting, and other electronic
records were all saved. We were able to discover this as quickly as we did because
our neighbors in the Arsenal’s Building #6, the National Postal Mailhandlers
Union (Local 308), let us bring our horrible soot-redolent machine and our horrible
soot-redolent selves into their building, where there was power, and work with
it for two days during which they made us and our computer consultants comfortable
and did *not* wrinkle their noses. By then, Arsenal management and staff
had set us up to move into new quarters just four doors down from “home,”
still on the Parade Ground, as we let you know in our first posting on this;
and within three days, we were working there with server and internet access
via mobile broadband devices and laptops (thank you, Ryan @ Sprint!). We got
full phone service two days later, although in two steps. Regaining DSL took
longer, as DSL always takes longer; but thanks to the savvy and determined efforts
of Eric, the Verizon guy who came to do the installation, we had even that by
the 23d, the same day that Because PRB&M’s business offices in #4 were on the second floor,
where the fire and smoke were most destructive, not just all those relatively
delicate computers but pretty much ALL our business supplies and office equipment
are having to be replaced — from the post-a-note, stapler, and stationery
level; through the fax, phone, copier, printer, and scanner levels; to the table,
chair, desk, and bookcase levels. We were able to save almost no furniture from
this floor — we are absolutely confident, so far, only of a small map
chest, an antique red velvet chair (notable as Sessa’s “throne”),
and maybe one low bookcase from Cynthy’s office, plus a few “barrister’s”
bookcase units and a lamp from the cataloguers’ room. A dozen utility
tables serve us as desks, now, in tidy #8; it’s a change, although these
are graced with a certain number of salvaged desk-top treasurables and we dare
hope that at least a few more “pieces” will yet prove recoverable
from among our larger, presently-not-looking-so-good fittings. We shall see!
In sum, though #8 is cramped
compared to #4, and though our work systems are dislocated to levels of inefficiency
that we know will hurt us, we have been comfortable, warm, and dry here through
the late-March cold snaps and April’s many showers. We can still take
flower deliveries, there is a good place for our birdfeeder, and Cynthy used
her first emoticon after the fire because she really *really* liked the paint
scheme we'd found ourselves moved into ;) .
It
could be much, much, MUCH worse.
The Fire Itself, & Our Building: The
partners were travelling when the fire struck; we were six hours away, in Rochester,
NY, when the alarm company called Cynthy’s cell at 2-something a.m. Though
we started back immediately we could not arrive on site until between 9 and
10, and by that time the fire was out, the building was boarded up, the utilities
were turned off, there was yellow caution tape everywhere, and the roof openings
had been tarped by Arsenal workers with an excellence that was to be remarked
on by investigators, insurance adjusters, estimating contractors, and
the preservation architect who came by to consult two weeks later. Arsenal management,
besides seeing to the securing and shut-down of the building, had also thought
to station a guard to keep an eye on it, and the guards at the gates had turned
back all the eager news teams that showed up over the course of the night. (Though
we were headed, apparently, for appearance on all channels in the Delaware Valley
“market,” all that got “out there” were the impressive
and upsetting helicopter shots. Who would have imagined, when we signed on to
reside here, that the walls and gates would offer that kind of valuable
benefit, or that the guards would take such considerate, proprietary interest
in protecting our privacy at an unimaginably hard moment?) We partners
admit we are glad we did not see the flames, but we hate it that they will now
be lurking as dream-fodder for those who did come out to deal with the crisis
as it was unfolding — our spouses, John and Peggy, and our senior employees,
Derek Plattowski and (later) Cynthia Williams.
We still do not know precisely how the fire started; the forensic inspector/engineer
is yet to give his report. But we do know that it was electrical in nature and
that it started on the back wall of the shop's rear addition, on the second
floor, next to the fireplace in David's bookcase-lined rear office. In this
room the fire consumed everything; you cannot tell there were bookcases there,
let alone that there were 600+ books in them. The very walls are gone, out to
the blackened exterior brick; the roof above is partly burned away and chopped-through.
(The books and manuscripts here included much significant uncatalogued stock
and some of the best stock, including collections we were building and special
things being saved for the NY book fair.) The fire then moved forward, incinerating
a bathroom and the entire contents of the upper back hall, also full of uncatalogued
books, though in this portion the plaster did not melt or break and a good many
elements of the woodwork survived.
Office manager Cynthia Williams's office, off this hall, suffered a great
deal from heat and smoke. Two computer stations, a book care center, and most
of those destroyed supplies were here; this office lost an elegant gothic window,
and indeed all fifteen windows on the second floor had to be broken out during
the fight against the fire. Pictures of Cynthia’s husband and children,
survived!
And where the fire was, there was water. UNDER where the fire was, there was
water. The first floor packing room, the rear part of “SessaBks,”
and the kitchen all presented upsetting instances of dropped ceiling plaster,
floor puddles, wet walls —
we WILL survive, we will GET TO
GO FORWARD!
the
first cleaned books arrived in the new building. (To get our order
into the system before a critical weekend, after the business office here had
closed, Eric had networked a call to an office he knew was still open in the
Midwest!) Restoration of our ability to process credit cards, and to comply
with the electronic record-keeping requirements for UPS shipments, followed
along in due course . . .
A new server and eight desktop set-ups, and all their peripherals including
routers and back-up equipment, were by then ordered, and most of these are now
working in the temp-quarters; but the survivor server is at this writing still
chugging away for us (and still smelly), in parallel with the new one that is
still being configured. As to non-electronic records — archives of more
than a year or two back were in safely remote places, but a considerable quantity
of recently archived and working papers were destroyed or are (still!) too malodorous
to work with, with particularly inconvenient implications just at tax time!
Yet here, too, we were lucky; and perhaps this is the place to blazon it that the firefighters were heroic not only in their bravery and their fire-dousing expertise, but in their professional thoughtfulness. We heard from them the next day that having been dispatched to a business address, they arrived at a building that looked like a home — so immediately they shifted gears to search for occupied bedrooms. Finding no rooms that looked even occupiable as bedrooms, they discarded the “home” theory and decided that the place might be a museum — so, consistent with getting the fire out and doing so safely, they took it on to protect everything they could from additional damage in the firefighting. They chose, for example, to run hoses in and up through the back passageway, rather than up the front staircase; and a whole section of books in “SessaBks Back,” directly under David's office, was saved because they threw an impermeable tarp over it. At the end of this, we will tell you about another kindness in these members of the Philadelphia Fire Department . . .
At the end of our burned-out back hall, we caught a literal good “break.”
Those who have visited #4 will remember that we always loved to point
out the 27-inch thick walls of the original, 1820 front part of the building,
one of which constituted the border between it and the 1840s–‘70s
rear addition. The
fire, coming forward from the back, could not, DID
NOT, jump this wall! So though the contents
of the upstairs front hall, the cataloguers’ room, Hayce and Derek’s
room, the pink bathroom, and Cynthy’s office were largely lost to heat
and smoke — though the paint of the tall hall cupboard and the skylight
is black and blistered, the walls everywhere are grey and streaky, and the magnificent
floors are crunchy with debris — it appears that this part of the building
itself, with the exception of those windows that will need painstaking replacement,
can be brought back by cleaning, repair, painting, and refinishing. It will
not require actual rebuilding.
Yes, future discoveries as to electrical, plumbing, and HVAC systems may affect
this relatively cheerful conclusion — the insulation we had just had installed,
everywhere, will certainly need to be replaced, for example — but here,
once again, we arrive at:
It could have been much, much worse!
Tales of burning and charring, of “fire” damage, mercifully stop at this point. The handsome first floor of our building’s front part — forward of the soggy kitchen, starting with the pantry that had been the “pamphlet room” and including our beloved curving staircase — this looks pretty good, within the terms to be understood here. It is filthy; every stitch and stick of everything has had to be removed from it for cleaning, and the structure itself will need to be heavy-cleaned, repainted, in almost every way refinished. But it should not need to be rebuilt. IT IS INTACT.
The PRB&M People?!
Well, we are holding up and marching forward. Cynthia
“Goddess” Williams and Derek P. get huge, HUGE props, both of them;
this even more for managing the transition to our temp quarters than
for laboring at it, though their labor has been immense. Prospects would
be very different without these two. Hayce has spent many hours sourcing
and then installing the new computer equipment and rebuilding the network, occasionally
consulting our software/networks guru Terence O’Brien and with on-call
all-hours help from hardware/networks guy Ralph Posmontier. (Ralph presided
over the coming of the first computers to PRB&M even before it was PRB&M,
over 25 years ago.) Hayce has also cleaned books, as has Wendy; James
has cleaned things and hauled things and generally stood by to take on what
might come up. Cynthia W’s brother Derek Fountain has come on board
to provide generous additional help, contributing among other things a nifty
cleaning/“sweetening” formula of his own devising that has been
balm to a dozen varieties of our smoky non-book property. (This concoction
involves vinegar, baking soda, lemon, and who knows what incantations in secret
proportions.) At this writing, a month and a half after the fire, EVERYONE’s
time is still much more spent on fire recovery than on bookselling — but
we do expect to get back to that!
The PRB&M Cats: The loss of
Sessa and Thalia continues to ache and pierce. Telling people about it, talking
about it, has been hard in itself; so many friends, visitors, and longtime correspondents
had cared for Sessa, and we had *just* begun to write everyone so brightly about
Thalia! — news of their deaths was a shock hard to deliver. But
there have been good things to tell even there, and the first and most important
one is that we are now SURE that they suffered neither pain nor terror. One
of the most senior firemen made a point of talking about this, when the crew
came back the next day to check on things. “I'm not a vet,” he began
. . . but he said that “if it's the same as with people” they probably
felt nothing except a sudden surprising sleepiness. As other medical friends
later made clear, what’s usually called “smoke inhalation”
is NOT what it sounds like. It is not
a matter of choking on a black cloud in a panic, but rather is a change in the
quality of clear air taken in that the mind does not recognize. And the cats
will have died early, away from the actual flames and before the alarm was clanging
or other strange, scary things started to be perceptible.
When the fire crew found
Sessa, they brought him out of the building in one of our large wicker carrying-baskets;
they had even kindly covered him with a towel. Then when Thalia was found later,
by Derek, she joined him in that same basket. We hope that those reading this
can take the same comfort we do in the fact
that the little pair garnered care and respect in their deaths even as they
had found fosterage and love in their lives.
Moreover, our two four-footers have since been remembered and memorialized
in ways that the two-footed among us can only hope to deserve: Touching emails
and beautiful cards have arrived here speaking of them, contributions have been
sent to shelters in their names in many states, one friend bought a book in
Sessa’s memory, and at least one book bought by an institution was shelved
by its purchasing librarian as she made a point of thinking of him — he
had allowed her to skritch his head, after all, on a visit here. People have
shared sweet stories of their own cats, and it must be understood that many,
many cats (and other creatures, “here and abroad”) have gotten
extra pats and treats from humans thinking of our cats. Sessa, THE
PRB&M shopcat and founder of “SessaBks,” will always preside
here as our Genius, in the Roman sense of “personal guardian”; and
Thalia, though gone too young to have “founded” anything but her
toys under the sofa, will always, ALWAYS
be remembered as PRB&M's brightest possible little Muse.
So, going forward: Why, everything continues
to be at once quite hard and very good here! The list of all that must be done
to achieve restoration entirely to our old #4 “selves” is daunting
to contemplate; but as we keep saying, both as fact and mantra, there are kindness
and competence all around us. The fabric of this posting is shot through with
shiny threads highlighting smart and gracious actions taken by Arsenal management,
staff, and guards, by neighbors here on the Parade Ground, by workmen determined
to get us back “up,” by the firefighters themselves and by a variety
of other professionals. The night clerk at the hotel where David and Cynthy
had been staying when the alarm came in, sent them off with a care package of
coffee and breakfast things. Before the first post-fire day was over, we had
had email from librarian friends not only offering condolences and encouragement
but making sure we had all the necessary, current contact information
for our “book rescue” contractors. We received similarly early calls
from bookseller friends and others offering temporary work space, storage space,
and/or the vans and labor needed to move things from here to there. People
sent us flowers, and gorgeous boxes and baskets of appetite-inciting
fruit, candy, and other treats. We soon heard from clients, customers, and former employees
around the world, by email, phone, and “txt,” with seasonable words
so well phrased and so clearly from the heart that we cried in the good ways.
We got forward-looking orders, these to be sent “whenever that becomes
possible.”
Some of the emails that have most often been “read over” —
read over many times — are still among those that may not have been answered
— but we look forward to writing our remaining replies not only with gratitude
(and apologies for slowth, if not sloth), but with pleasure.
Why, our local BANKERS brought us doughnuts one busy Thursday.
How nice was that??
So,
we are still in business! Because so much of our time is presently taken up with fire matters, we may
be slower to respond to you than is usually the case. Orders may yet be sometimes
slow in fulfillment, for a while — such a lot is still in boxes or in
some other way not very accessible; and of course everything called for has
to be gone over thoroughly before sending to be sure
that its condition is still as it was when it was described. (If it is not,
we consult promptly with the enquirer interested.) The “Visit us” page here at the website is sadly (indeed, disconcertingly)
out of date; it reflects none of what you have been reading here. But if you
think anyway of stopping to see us, even during our early period in #8, do call
and check in. Very possibly it *can* be managed! We now have no kitchen, but
we can organize a certain degree of hospitality despite that; and while many
books can’t currently be browsed, others can. We long for the day when
we can receive you in a risen #4, but meantime It is Spring in Philadelphia. And below is the shop’s
newest logo, being the phoenix woodcut device of the Venetian incunable publisher
Blondus, taken as printed in red from the sole edition of Johannes Ferrarius’s
De caelesti vita (pr. Matteo Capcasa [di Codeca], 1494.
As the news got farther out, we started to hear from an astonishing range of
website visitors, including sympathetic bookselling colleagues in far, far-flung
places — previously unknown to us, they wrote in most wonderful ways!
And touchingly apt comforts were offered. A fine binder in the South
offered to repair or bind a hurt, special book; a friend who deals in prints
offered similarly to reframe something dear in anticipation of our eventual
return to #4. To reestablish the PRB&M reference section, an upper-Midwest
collector means to send David, from his own library, a bibliography he has always
wanted. Before he or we knew what PRB&M stock had survived, a bookseller
colleague with a great grasp of essentials had sent us a big box of books to
sell, both as a symbolic and as a down-home practical gift. People have offered
to drive miles to clean stuff, sort stuff, or simply deliver hugs, and a church
congregation took up a special collection with the plan of donating it to a
literacy program, probably a children’s literacy program — where
else does love of BOOKS, start? What better reminder of what's at heart represented
here?
“8
is GR8"?
Yours, David & Cynthy
The Partners
but definitely Cynthy writing!
All
material © 2009
The Philadelphia Rare Books & Manuscripts Company