'Now it will be another eyesore around the city.'
Windows on the first two stories of the Marsellus Casket Co. plant, 101 Richmond Ave., were boarded up after the factory closed in 2003.Syracuse, NY -- Lawrence English, the former president of the Marsellus Casket Co., rarely drives by the old building where he worked for 32 years. It's just too sad, he said.
The building was old, but in reasonably good shape when the casket company went out of business in 2003, English said.
Now it lays in ruins, destroyed by an early morning fire that’s likely to continue burning throughout today, and possibly into tomorrow, according to Syracuse Fire Chief Mark McLees.
"It’s a sad thing, our company spent 130 years there,” said English, who is now the president of Premier Hardwood Products, Inc., a hardwood floor maker in Jamesville.
English was Marsellus’ last president. He spent a career there designing caskets, the equipment that made them and running the company.
The offices in the front of the building at 101 Richmond Ave. were nice, and it seems as if someone could have made use of the building, he said.
The outside of the building was brick. Heavy wood floors on the inside were stacked one over the other held up by wooden floor joists and beams, English said. It’s like kindling, he said.
In this photo taken last year graffiti on the landmark clock above the Marsellus Casket Co. building says "time for change." This morning the building was destroyed by fire. Photo by Dennis Nett.“Once you get it burning there’s a lot of fuel there, real, real old dry timbers and flooring,” English said.
The original building sits on the corner of VanRensselaer Street and Richmond Avenue, he said. Over the years the company added four additions.
The casket company was founded in 1882 by John Marsellus and sold in 1997 to Service Corp. International, a large funeral services company. Six years later, SCI unexpectedly closed the company and sold its name and intellectual property to competitor Batesville Casket Co.
The building was sold and then resold to developers, but no one ever redeveloped it.
The heat had been turned off. There was no electricity and the roof had been leaking, English said, adding that he had been told by neighbors that homeless people had set up house there over the years.
It had become so sad, what with the weeds and all, that English said he only drove past it once or twice a year.
“It’s too bad. What are you going to do?,” he said. “Now it will be another eyesore around the city.”
» Read our coverage of today's fire.