A massive cloud of dark smoke blew from the 11th floor of Wayne State’s Maccabees Building onto the street at the intersection of Cass and W. Warren Ave. Wednesday afternoon.
Officials told reporters about an hour and a half after the fire started that the flames began on the 99-year-old building’s 11th floor air handling unit.
“We have a platform outside the 11th floor, it looks like an air handling unit caught on fire, and we received an alarm I think, not sure the exact time, at 1:01pm, and alarm shows us it was the fire in the building. Officers immediately respond.”
A Michigan Chronicle reporter first captured the scene at 1:06pm.
“It’s mostly water damage right now… through the top floors, 11th 10th and 9th,” Wayne State police chief Anthony Holt told reporters, adding that crews will investigate and assess damage throughout the day. “We don’t know about the electrical damage yet.”
Holt said there were no injuries, no classrooms involved. While the Wayne State Welcome Center is open, some professors decided to cancel afternoon class, students told Michigan Chronicle.
Detroit Fire Department community relations chief James Harris said response time was under five minutes.
The area was surrounded by emergency response vehicles as police closed off traffic on both sides of Woodward from W. Warren Ave. to Farnsworth Street. Shields Pizza and Chase Bank, the building’s street level businesses, will remain closed until the investigation concludes, he said.
The QLine street cars have been temporarily suspended due to the fire, the rail announced on social media Wednesday.
About 60 firefighters and medics were outside of the building, Harris said.
“We’re built for this, it doesn’t matter the age of the building or how many flights, this is what we do,” Harris said. “The men adn women of the Detroit Fire Department did an awesome job — no one’s injured, everybody got out okay.”
Students, residents walking their dogs and people waiting for their bus at shelters on Woodward near W. Warren took out their phones to capture the huge smoke clouds that could be seen for miles away from the building downtown and in New Center.
The building is known for its Art Deco style and ceiling mosaics in the lobby. Designed by Albert Khan, the building first housed the Maccabees, a fraternal organization which at one point had 200,000 members in North America.
The building, first opening to tenants in 1927, also housed a news radio station, WGHP, which switched its call letters to WXYZ in 1930. Nearly twenty years later, the station began broadcasting television from the building.
Checkout HistoricDetroit.org for more information on the historic Maccabees Building.
