919 Third Avenue is an office building in New York City, built in 1971, and is located at the intersection of Third Avenue and East 55th Street in Midtown Manhattan. The building is 615 feet (188 meters) tall with 47 floors, the developers decided to build around a 3rd Avenue landmark P. J. Clarke's bar and restaurant, which I frequent on occasion and to get my ten year watch which was all gold. On December 1973, the fifth floor suffered a fire partially destroying part of the floor, injuring 20, and killing three. The building was completed in 1971, and tenant work was still in progress at the time of the fire. I remember calling my office manager, for advice to the crowd I saw from our 25th Floor. She informed me that it was under control, I informed my subordinates that there was no fear, and that we could continue working. A few minutes later smoke started to come through the vents engulfing the entire perimeter of our two floors which house 250 employees. Just imagine employees running for their life it was a mess, folks were falling on top of each other and screaming for help. Some of us started to go down the stairwells, but the carpet started to burn coming up the stairs heading our way. So me and some other folks pressed the elevator button, and behold the arrival of the elevator, but there was a problem as it was full of smoke, as the use of the elevators resulted in the three fire deaths when the car inadvertently stopped at the fire floor. Others were almost killed in the same way but were rescued by fire fighters.
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But for some reason the elevator had firefighters in control of its operation, we felt it was safe they took us down to the first floor of the building without hesitation. I still remember seeing corpse being transported in black body bags. Glass was being blown out from the force of the blowback, large pieces of glass was falling in front of the building, as thousands on lookers across the street looking at this disaster. I remember the firemen telling me and some other folks that we had to run away from the building after each blast of glass which was blowing from the upper floors, and if we couldn’t run fast we had to stay in the lobby. Well I was pretty young at the time it was no problem for me to run the distant across the street. After that fire we had the movie the Towering Inferno and numerous regulations imposed on New York City Skyscrapers, and the removal of carpet in stairwells. It was a war zone and of cause after that I was assigned to be a fire warden we had drills after drills. I hope those who work in skyscrapers aren’t fearful after reading this it was just one of those things in life. Barry S Allen Sr.