Officials say the historic Morgan-Manning House Museum in Brockport is compromised but structurally sound after a fire tore through the building Tuesday night.
"The building is ultimately repairable," said Chad Fabry, code enforcement officer for the village.
But it likely will take years of work and fundraising, he added. And while structural damage is significant — a third of the roof is gone, he said — many of the artifacts inside from furniture to artwork on the walls look surprisingly intact, though they are wet and frozen.
"And so when it thaws, you know, that's when the beautiful organ will crack and fall apart. Or the table will warp to a condition that can't be repaired," he said of the worst-case scenario. "Right now, a lot of the furniture and furnishings look pretty good, but understand that they're saturated and frozen. So the reclamation process, you know, is probably going to yield some failures."
He continued: "There's, you know, various pieces on display that look intact. ... But there's also a lot of destruction."
The 1854 Victorian-style mansion holds "enormous significance" in the community, said Mayor Margaret Blackman.
"They have a lot of events and things there," she said. "It's the location for the village's old fashioned Fourth of July, which has gone on for, I don't know, probably a good 40 years. People get married there, people have memorial services there."
Her daughter was married there, and she recently celebrated her 80th birthday there with friends.
“We will be bringing in curator specialists and experts before we move any of the artifacts, so that we don't do damage in moving anything," said Paul Kimball, board president of the Western Monroe Historical Society, which oversees the property.
“One of the silver linings," he said, "is a bunch of volunteers built a museum room that had the history of the family that owned a house, and they bought museum quality display cases, and everything that was in the display cases has been preserved. ... Unfortunately, in the two yellow rooms and in the hallway downstairs, we lost some priceless paintings of the family and family members.”
The building has yet to be formally inspected, but Kimball echoed Fabry: "It's going to be a long process, but the board is committed to exploring every alternative to make sure that we can rebuild."
The immediate push is to get a cover over the roof so further water damage doesn't occur, officials said. That is likely to happen on Monday, Kimball said, assuming asbestos testing comes back negative.
The fire was reported shortly before 7 p.m. Tuesday as Kimball and another board member arrived for a meeting. The cause is thought to be electrical, and have started in the north part of the basement near the boilers then extended through the the wall cavity to the roof on the building’s south side.
"There's been such an outpouring from the community and beyond," the mayor said. "It's just, it's incredible all the emails we've gotten, texts, phone calls, offers to help. It's been very heartening."
The building did not have a working sprinkler system but Fabry said, in his opinion, it would have done nothing to contain the fire. When the house was built the construction method was to have main walls extend, uninterrupted, from the basement to the attic, creating an open chimney-like stretch that allows fire to spread quickly and out of reach. Today there is at break at each floor or platform, which helps to contain a fire's spread.
The mansion experienced a deadly fire in 1964 and was repaired and placed on the National register of historic places.