Red Hook Open Studios Returns, 13 Months After Five-Alarm Fire

Red Hook Open Studios held its 11th edition on October 10 and 11, nearly 13 months after a five-alarm fire scorched part of a historic Van Brunt Street warehouse in the Brooklyn waterfront neighborhood.

The Civil War-era structure still stands under a partial vacate order. An unsightly green sidewalk shed wraps part of the block just before the pier. The building itself remains off-limits.

Yet the festival went ahead. And when festival co-coordinator Deborah Ugoretz distributed flyers promoting the event a few weeks before, she met a puzzling reaction: some residents were surprised the festival was still happening at all.

"They assumed that all the artists and makers in Red Hook were affected by the fire, but there are still hundreds of makers and artists here," Ugoretz told Hyperallergic. Her own studio, a few doors down from the damaged warehouse, avoided both fire and water damage.

Who came back?

Some artists displaced by the fire have returned to the area, according to the report. They have moved into studios in nearby buildings closer to the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. The neighborhood's creative population has not evaporated; it has shifted a few blocks.

What the report does not say is how many left permanently, or how many of the displaced found new space elsewhere in the city. No figure is given for the number of artists the fire drove out in the first place.

What does this change for Red Hook?

For the neighborhood's arts economy, the answer is continuity. Hundreds of makers and artists remain, in Ugoretz's count, and the festival that showcases them survived both the fire and the assumption that it would not. Kentler International Drawing Space staged its annual benefit exhibition alongside the open studios, signaling that the neighborhood's institutions are operating as usual.

The caveat sits on Van Brunt Street. As long as the partial vacate order stays in force and the shed surrounds the block, the warehouse at the center of the 2025 fire remains a fenced-off reminder — and the artists who once worked there are working somewhere else.

Whether the building is repaired, repurposed, or lost will shape the next chapter of a neighborhood that, for now, is choosing to stay.

By Tom Whitfield