The roughly 130-year-old facility once served as the county’s first high school and library.
Merced, California (KFSN) On Monday morning, a fierce fire devastated a historic building in downtown Merced.
The fire started around 6:30 a.m. in the former county library building on 22nd near M Street.
The video from the municipal fire department reveals the huge effort personnel faced as they attempted to salvage at least some of the roughly 130-year-old structure.
“Tragic ending for a majestic building,” Merced County Sheriff Vern Warnke stated.
An excavator tumbled into the ancient building while it was being dismantled, hours after the fire began.
Crews are still trying to pull the piece of equipment out of the structure. The Merced County Historical Society’s photos depict the edifice in 1897, when it was the county’s first high school. According to Courthouse Museum Director Sarah Lim, by 1920, the school had outgrown its student population.
“After that it was renovated and remodelled into a county library, and it was used from 1920 to 1975,” Lim told me.
Since then, she said the forlorn structure has stood unoccupied but is nonetheless full of memories.
“It’s one of the oldest buildings in the city of Merced, and its listed in the national registry of historic places,” said Lim.
Throughout the day, crews attempted to extinguish the fire and protect the nearby county facilities.
Despite the damage to this Romanesque-style structure, it remains standing due to its unique architecture.
“It was built with red bricks, so when you look at original photos of the building, you see red bricks all over, and over the year’s they put plaster all over the building,” Lim told me.
“That’s why when it got burned down today, you see layers of red brick, beneath those paint.”
Local authorities indicate that prior to the fire, there were plans to restore the three-story structure, but the cost of the possible project stopped this from happening.
“If we would have had the financing way back in the day to rebuild it or just make it usable again so that our citizens could use it,” says Sheriff Warnke.
“There was certainly potential, but everything was expensive. It’s unfortunate for the county that it ended in such a dreadful manner.”
The cause of the fire is still being investigated. It’s also not clear how much damage has occurred.
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