Firemen walk through the remains of a knitting factory on Knickerbocker Avenue after fighting the “All Hands Fire,” New York City’s biggest fire until Sept. 11, 2001.

Though his first attempt got rained out, local historian Adam Schwartz was bestowed with the finest fall conditions imaginable during his second effort to lead a walking tour of central Bushwick this past Saturday.

Yellow leaves, illuminated by a departing autumn sun, drifted slowly toward the pavement as we wandered through Bushwick’s core to the epicenter of the 1977 blackout riots on Broadway – all together, making for an unusually serene day to reflect upon the neighborhood’s more chaotic times.

"Bushwick is seen through the old stereotype of being a burned out ghetto full of criminals," Schwartz said. "But when I started my work, I really wanted to figure out the rest of the story because there has to be more to it than that."

Schwartz, a local high school teacher, is best known for his work on the Up From Flames exhibit in 2007 and he occasionally shares his Bushwick history knowledge by leading walking tours throughout the neighborhood. This time, his tour started at the Myrtle-Wyckoff subway station, a major transit hub for more than a century.

	Bushwick’s burns. Click to see more.

From there, we headed south over remains of the Evergreen Line, a former rail line that ran just south of Wyckoff Avenue until the 1960s. Walking along the Ridgewood border, Schwartz discussed how our Queens-ward neighbors ditched their Brooklyn zip code in 1981 to save their property values and cap their insurance costs as Bushwick fell to crime and arson.

Before reaching the city’s newest, most stylish fire station on Knickerbocker Avenue, we passed Bushwick High School and decoded the colorful mural around the corner called "Time Flies: A History of Bushwick," which was designed by students from the Academy of Urban Planning under the direction of Los Muralistas de El Puente.

Then, at the corner of Knickerbocker and Menahan, the fire discussions began. Seven blocks burned to the ground here after kids started a fire in an abandoned knitting factory that stood where the 83rd Precinct stands today. What they didn’t know at the time was that a 300,000-gallon tank of kerosene was sitting in the basement and it would explode upon contact with the flames. The result was the All Hands Fire – the biggest blaze in FDNY history until Sept. 11, 2001.

The disaster, along with other smaller fires, left a large swath of land in the center of Bushwick that was nothing but rubble and ash. At one point, pedestrians could see an uninterrupted view of the apocalyptic landscape from Palmetto Street to Menahan. But the empty space did not sit unused for long, as Hope Gardens, the nation’s very last publicly owned housing project, was built over this area and completed in 1981.

On Evergreen Avenue, Schwartz introduced us to Vincent Hall Jr., a longtime Bushwick resident and St. Barbara’s Roman Catholic Church parish council president, who described life in Bushwick during the "Fire Wars."

"You never knew when the next fire would happen," Hall said. "You always had to be alert and keep your ears open even if you were sleeping because you never knew when it was going to be your turn."

We then took a small break from the tragedy talk to enjoy the beautifully preserved mansions on "Doctor’s Row" along Bushwick Avenue before heading down quaint brownstone-lined Linden Street. Once we reached Broadway, Schwartz talked about the well-publicized riots during the blackout of 1977 and how they brought the neighborhood "to its knees."  The area used to be a shopping district so popular, people had to go up the stairs of the Gates Avenue subway station just to cross the crowded street, Schwartz said. But many of those shops were looted and closed after the riots and the East Broadway shopping district is still recovering to this day.

"I wish I could tell you simply what happened here," Schwartz said. "But all I can say is if a city walks away and pulls out funding from a neighborhood, what do its neglected residents have left to stand for?"

The tour ended with the promises of a rich compost pile at the Linden-Bushwick Community Garden where Schwartz spoke of the local farmer’s market as a force of progress in a neighborhood that’s ready to move beyond the images of its charred past. His next and last tour for the season will be held in early December and trace parts of southern Bushwick. Contact Schwartz at cartlegger@gmail.com for more information.