Fire Exposes Hazardous Conditions in Hamilton Heights Apartment Building

A blaze caused by electrical wiring led to injuries to four occupants and two firefighters and the displacement of residents from seven residential units.

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By Allan Kew

Jair Sanchez, smelling “something weird, something burnt,” opened her sixth-floor apartment’s front door to a smoke-filled hallway. She was unaware of an apartment fire two floors below, and the fire alarms on her floor failed to go off.

Sanchez banged on neighbors’ doors screaming, “Fire!”

She sent her son and niece down the fire escape and she and her brother followed them, carrying their 75-year-old mother to safety. 

Sixty firefighters responded to the July 26 blaze at 695 Saint Nicholas Avenue in Hamilton Heights, according to a fire department spokesperson. Four civilians and two firefighters were hurt, with two suffering life-threatening injuries. Electrical wiring caused the fire, according to the Fire Marshal Report.

The blaze and collapsed ceilings exposed asbestos and displaced the occupants of seven apartments. The exact number of people who lost their homes, if only temporarily, remains unknown because Department of Building inspectors discovered illegal single room occupancy units in the basement.

Known as the Sadivian Arms, 695 Saint Nicholas Ave. was built in 1906 and featured in “Apartment Houses of the Metropolis,” a 1908 guide for tenants seeking “new and luxurious apartment houses.” The building advertised modernity and extravagance, including eight room apartments with servants’ quarters, and a roof garden “with palms, rugs, tables and electric lights.” Rents ranged from $600 to $1,000, the latter equivalent to over $30,000 in today’s dollars, inflation calculators show.

In the months before July’s blaze, the Friends of 695 Saint Nicholas Avenue Tenant Association sent three letters to management stating the sixth-floor fire alarm was “in-active”. Other complaints included single room occupancy units, unsecured entryways, heating outages, a crumbling entrance and elevators that open above or below floor levels. The tenants requested repair timelines, a maintenance request system, a new superintendent and an end to harassment of residents over their complaints to the city.

Part of the entranceway collapsed in 2021 due to a water leak. (Photo by Kristen Rea)

Part of the entranceway collapsed in 2021 due to a water leak. (Photo by Kristen Rea)

Gideon Stryker, the building’s managing agent, and his father, Adam Stryker, the property owner, did not respond to requests for comment.

The city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development lists 118 open and pending violations for the property, including 55 hazardous class B violations, such as water leakage from ceilings, and 36 immediately hazardous class C violations, like cockroach infestations. Department data shows that 695 Saint Nicholas is tied for the 20th-most cited building among the 600 properties with class C and B violations in the 10030 zip code.

“That’s normal for a New York City building,” said Jose Rodriguez, the building superintendent, of the building’s violations. Rodriguez, 50, defended Gideon as “doing a good job.”

Rodriguez, who lives in the building, said some tenants call 311 “for any stupid thing” instead of first calling or texting him about problems.

Adam Stryker ranked sixth out of 100 on the city’s Office of Public Advocate’s 2017 “Worst Landlords Watchlist,” based on hazardous class B and C violations. Stryker then owned 177 units in 11 buildings with 734 violations. He fell off the list in 2018.

The tenants in 20 of the 39 units at 695 Saint Nicholas have begun working with People Against Landlord Abuse and Tenant Exploitation, a legal advocacy group for renters, to weigh a lawsuit against their landlord over the unaddressed repairs and harassment. 

Jair Sanchez examining evidence compiled by residents.

Jair Sanchez examining evidence compiled by residents.

Jael Sanchez, 42, Jair’s sister who lives with her, is part of the tenants group considering litigation. “No hard feelings, but my family could have died,” she said.

The housing department ordered the vacating of apartments affected by the fire until emergency repairs are made. The Department of Environmental Protection is overseeing asbestos abatement and the Department of Buildings ordered the building owner to generate “an engineering report to DOB on the status of the building, and come up with a plan for repairs,” said agency spokespeople via email.

Citations are closed “when the violation is observed/verified as corrected by HPD or as certified by the landlord,” according to a housing department guide. The department sends the tenant a letter about the correction with the option to contest, and “if no reinspection is conducted, the violation is deemed complied 70 days after the receipt of the certification,” according to a different guide for property owners.

Tenants say they feel underserved by the city, but save most of their ire for their elusive landlord.

The property is incorporated as 695 Nicholas Realty Corp., in care of Friedman Management Corp. The companies share the same address at 14 Penn Plaza in Midtown Manhattan. As many as 99 buildings are associated with Adam Stryker, president of the management company, and the Penn Plaza address, some with different owners or limited liability companies, according to JustFixIt’s “Who Owns What” database of information from the housing department.

Bettye Smith, 78, and her daughter Cathy, 49, have lived in the building since 1976 and recall better days when a previous landlord, Kenneth Friedman, had a “hands on” interest in the Sadivian Arms.

“This man would come to the apartment, and he would look and when he saw something wrong he would call that super and he would curse him out. ‘What the hell is this going on?,’” Bettye said. The attitude of the current landlord is “just pay your rent and shut up,”

Cathy wishes “they could spend some time living in this building to see what we go through.”

(Photos by Allan Kew)

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