St. Luke’s fire; Abate runs for D.L.

Thirty years ago, the April 30, 1981, issue of The Villager reported that the recent devastating fire at the 160-year-old St. Luke’s Church in the Fields on Hudson St., in fact, had been caused by a “chemical reaction.” A front-page article stated that “a wooden girder had been leaning on a steam pipe underneath the church’s floor and that chemical ingredients in the wood had caused combustion to take place.” The other Page 1 article reported that, after Miriam Bockman’s resignation as Manhattan County Democratic leader and Greenwich Village female Democratic district leader, criminal lawyer Catherine Abate, 33, would run for Village district leader. Unfortunately, the two Page 1 headlines were flipped and put over the wrong articles. Ah, the good old days of paste-up.