Fort Tilden’s T-9 To Be Demolished
Story and Photos
By Katie McFadden
Fort Tilden’s T-9 is coming down. On Monday, July 29, the National Park Service announced that they will begin demolishing the historic building in late July.
After suffering a fire in the early morning hours of July 9, 2023, any hopes of rehabilitating the historic T-9 building were lost. “Although the National Park Service and many in the park partner community had hoped to one day see the rehabilitation of this historic structure, the impacts of the fire were too severe,” NPS said in a press release. A cause of the fire was never revealed, although some suspected arson.
The demolition process began by the end of July, and it is expected to take 10 weeks as abatement must be done before demolition begins. All equipment, materials and work performed will be within the existing fencing surrounding Building T-9. Visitor access to the rest of Fort Tilden will not be impacted.
Withstanding both World Wars, T-9 holds a place in Rockaway’s history as part of historic Fort Tilden. The building, toward the back of Fort Tilden, near the parking lot, was originally used as a locomotive repair center, servicing the railway that once ran through the base, and was later used as a motor pool for the U.S. Army and then the National Park Service. Fort Tilden as a whole was created in 1917 amid WWI and was deactivated as an Army base in 1974, when it was turned over to NPS.
T9 had gone unutilized for decades until MoMa PS1 brought new life to it for their Rockaway! art exhibit after Hurricane Sandy. In 2014, the building was used to house singer Patti Smith’s “Resilience of a Dreamer” which featured a bed draped with curtains hanging from the building’s tall ceilings. It was again used in 2018 by MoMa for Yayoi Kusama’s “Narcissus Garden,” housing dozens of reflective silver spheres. In recent years, it had mostly been a home for local “art” with the floors to ceiling donned in ever-changing graffiti.
