Fire!

I recently went to Thompson Park in Lincroft, NJ to walk a bit to rehab my feet. When I got there, I noticed a closed area, and looked at it and saw that the Thompson Park Vistor's Center, the old Thompson Mansion, had burned. It was regarded as the crown jewel of the Monmouth County Park System buildings. You can see a small view of the mansion in the portion of the home page related to the fire.

I walked past the south side of the house, which I don't recall ever having gone into, even though it hosted various events regularly over the last 40 years or so. A pre-fire photo of the mansion can be found here. I have to confess that I'd passed the mansion many times, but paid it little attention, and now it's gone.

When I walked past, the views I saw were these kinds of views, leading me to believe that although serious damage had been done, the building could be salvaged.
It looked bad, but not insurmountable.

I returned to the park to take some photos, and when I moved around to the north side of the mansion, I was greeted with this view.

And this view, which I shot because you could see one of the collapsed columns from the porch really saddened me.

The fire had happened back on February 6th, 2006, and was well covered by the Asbury Park Press. They have some excellent pictures of the fire here. It has since come out that a contractor, putting final touches on a $3.5 million restoration touched off the fire with a torch being used for soldering parts of the gutter system. It also came out that the building has sprinklers only in the basement, and that its balloon frame construction contributed to it rapid engulfment. Modern buildings are constructed with platform framing, which tends to stop fire from spreading vertically through walls or as readily into floors.

Because the mansion also served as park system headquarters, also lost in the fire were many records and artifacts relating to the history of the county parks.