A Gotham Horror

I. IVÉS CF.rSHF.n OITT. New York, Au?. 24. - In the twinklin of an eye without warning, without hope or chance of escape, probably eighty persons were swept to their deaths in a rotten old building in Park place at noon Saturilay. It was Taylor"s building at Nos. 63, 70, 72 and 74 Park place. It was occupied by lithographers, bookbinders, a monthly journal called the South, and on the ground floor were a drug store, restaurant, a paint and lumbiag shop. It was a structure so ancient and so f rail that the fire department had inarked it as unsafe and insurance corapanies vould hardly issue jolicies upon it It eollapsed like a piece oí burnt paper and crushed down on the jeople in it. Then carne fire and added ts horror to the rest. How many poor creatures instantly perished under the 'alling mass, how many were penned in Dy it and died after horrible agonies in ;he fire, how many were saved from these dreadful fates to be drowned in the loods of water that were poured upon ;he wreek after hours of heroic work by the firemen no one could teil. But by midnight Sunday there had been laken from the ruins serenteen crushed, burned and mangled bodies. Sixtyseven persons are reported missing, and there is little doubt but their remains are covered by the debris. At least fifty persons were injured. There is a considerable difference oí opinión as to the cause ot the disaster. People in the wrenked building who escaped say that there was no explosión, but those who were on the street near the scène say that they heard the report of an explosión, lt seems probable that the weight of the printing1 presses which were located on the top floors, together with the vibration of their raotion, proved too much for the' building1 and caused the collapse. The official report of the flre department ascribes the accident to an explosión of chemieals, but the mortar and brick, the heavy presses on the upper floors, and the veritable accounts of the trembling of the walls under their use teil the true cause of the disaster. No ordinary explosión in a druggist's store could have so wrecked and torn a building that had any right to stand. Inspector Williams, who has been at the scène of the disaster almost front the first moment, said in regard to the probable cause of ,the fearful accident: "Thsre was no explosión in that building, because there was nothing to explode. The accident was the result of a weak structure and the incessant vibration of the heavy presses." Many of the witne-ses who saw the crash say that the building slowly bulged out in the middle until it had formed a nottceable curve frora the roof to the ground and then it feil. At 2 o'clock the fire was under contnol. Half of thé Greenwich street building had been burned, while the Taylor building was a complete wreek. The losses were computed at $150,000 for tbe Taylor building and content and $40,000 for the Greenwich streét building. The next few hours after the disaster were a series of sad and shocking scènes - parents erying in the' streets over the bodies of their children, wives running to and Iro asking for their husbands and half mad with fear, mothers looking for sons and sisters for sisters, weeping crowds in hospitals and at many homes, and at times the dreadful sight of a limp and lifeless forra dragged out of the heaps of debris that lay half across the street. There were scènes of heroism, too, brave policemen rushing into the burning building and cutting out ways of saïety for some of the imprisoned; pjljoeftien and firemen bringing the terrifle4 and f ainting down the fire escapes, and for hours hundreds of witly)g hands digging at the smoking rubbish that covered the dead and living, fór alTthat feil in the unlucky building wtïe not killed. 1ÏEW York, Aug. 25. - Men were kept at work all day yesterday at the ruins of the building which collapsed on Park place last Öaturday. At midnight the thirty-sixth body had been recovered from the debris. Of he bodies found twenty have been idelitified by means of articles of clothing. Eighty-eight are still missing.