BALTIMORE — A fire at the Castle on Keswick building in Hampden has left local business owners devastated after water damage destroyed their shops while firefighters worked to extinguish the blaze.
Jill Andrews, who has operated her bridal shop in the building for 16 years, watched helplessly as her business was damaged by the water used to fight the fire.
"Unbelievable. It just, the flames were just starting to shoot up and the black smoke, I mean it was overwhelming," Andrews said.
Andrews managed to save vintage family wedding pieces - dresses handed down from mothers and grandmothers - but was unable to retrieve her clients' wedding gowns from the shop.
"I wanted to come in and grab my client's wedding gowns. They wouldn't let me in and then I just watched it burn," Andrews said.
Despite the damage, Andrews is working to fill orders for weddings scheduled for this weekend. She had built her shop as a special place for Baltimore brides over the past 16 years.
"I wanted it to be a special place and it was really important to me that people saw the art in what I did and I tried to create that," Andrews said.
Nicholas Etheridge, who runs his therapy office on the second floor of the building, was with a client when fire alarms went off. His personally decorated office, which he describes as feeling like his living room, contains family items and professional materials.
"I had decorated it very, very personally, right? It feels like my living room and it has a lot of like family stuff in there. Professionally, I'm just concerned about the impact it has on my patients; I'm sure they're very stressed," Etheridge said.
The Castle on Keswick building was originally the Northern District Police Precinct and features unique architecture that continues to attract tenants and visitors.
"One of the reasons I was drawn to this place and immediately hopped on it when I saw that there was an office open was it's gorgeous, right? There's the original everything, down to the hinges on the doors," Etheridge said.
Neighbors remain confident the historic building will be restored, even as cleanup crews remove bags of insulation and drywall damaged by the fire.
There is a GoFundMe for Jill Andrews that can be found here.
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