After the Fire

A photo essay. To view all the images, check out the email version.

Sometimes you only appreciate a thing after it’s gone up in flames. 

On September 1, that’s how I felt about 157 Orange Street, a three-story historic building where a major fire had just been doused. Injuring two, including one man who was reportedly badly burned—and forcing The Trinity, the pub on the first floor, to close for now—calamity had made the building a focal point, as opposed to a thing you normally pass without examining.

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The address’s flame-licked details—plumes of orangey brick left black by fire’s tongue, window trim charred like a burnt marshmallow, a swath of curved copper aged decades in minutes, leaves browned and shriveled on the tree outside—managed to be beautiful even like this. They were surely beautiful, albeit less newsworthy, before.

I only wish I’d bothered to look.

Written and photographed by Dan Mims.

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Dan has worked for a couple of major media companies, but he likes Daily Nutmeg best. As DN’s editor, he writes, photographs, edits and otherwise shepherds ideas into fully realized feature stories.

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