The NYC Fire Museum at 278 Spring St. in SoHo will reopen to the public on August 20 at 10 a.m., ending more than two years of closure that began in May 2024 when structural integrity concerns forced staff to evacuate the 120-year-old firehouse. The reopening arrives just weeks before the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks, and museum leadership has timed a new tribute to that milestone: a 200-pound World Trade Center responder bell honoring FDNY members who died from illnesses connected to their Ground Zero recovery work.
The closure itself traced back to construction next door. According to amNewYork, employees called emergency services after hearing loud banging and feeling the floors shake, and city legal filings later revealed the vibrations came from nearby construction on Walt Disney Company's new 22-story headquarters. As reported by Firehouse Magazine, the resulting damage was estimated at roughly $6 million to the historic building, and the museum has said the shaking hit during a birthday party setup, with walls shaking and floors softening beneath staff. In May 2024, initial New York City Buildings Department inspections triggered by 311 calls about the shaking ordered an immediate professional engineering review of the facade, and FDNY leadership promised at the time to keep the collection intact, per FireRescue1.
A Costly Closure for a Nonprofit Landmark
The two-year shutdown hit the nonprofit museum's finances hard. During fiscal year 2023–2024, the museum generated $571,000 in revenue against an operational target of more than $772,000, according to Chip and Co, a gap that reflects how central ticket sales and school tours are to keeping the institution running. City Council member Julie Menin said the council approved $900,000 in its 2026 budget to help fund critical repairs, and Council members Christopher Marte and Joann Ariola worked alongside her to secure nearly $1 million for roof repairs at the museum. Ariola said the museum should reopen before the 25th anniversary so it can keep educating younger generations about September 11.
Renovations went beyond patching the damage. The museum underwent structural and aesthetic upgrades that included new flooring, a renovated roof, upgraded HVAC systems and other building enhancements, while thousands of artifacts were kept in place throughout the work. The building itself, designed by architect Edward P. Casey and constructed in 1904 for Engine Company 30, served as an active firehouse until 1959 before reopening as the official NYC Fire Museum on July 6, 1987, according to Daytonian in Manhattan. Formal FDNY preservation efforts date back even further, to December 1870 at department headquarters on Mercer Street, before the nonprofit Friends of the New York City Fire Department Collection established the permanent Spring Street home in 1987, per Wikipedia.
A New Bell, and a New Kind of Leadership
The museum's new executive director, Dominick Robert Derubbio, became the first 9/11 family member to lead the institution when he took the role in 2025. Derubbio is the son of David Paul Derubbio, a firefighter who served in Engine 226 in Brooklyn and responded to the September 11 attacks; his father survived that day but died in the World Trade Center attacks, a detail the museum's own account holds without further elaboration in available reporting. Derubbio said the reopening will thank the people who supported the museum through its closure, and he hopes to unveil the new responder bell in time for the anniversary, plans to bring it to the museum with a uniformed escort.
The bell was cast at the Mollineri Foundry, an approximately 800-year-old bell foundry in Italy, at Agnone. It will honor FDNY responders who died from illnesses connected to their Ground Zero work, as well as first responders from other agencies who served in the recovery effort. The museum's director has said, per amNewYork, that a specific number of FDNY members died in the September 11 attacks, and the museum is already home to the first permanent memorial to firefighters who died that day — a display that includes a black marble and tile memorial, firefighter photographs, recovered tools and a wall-size timeline.
Illness Deaths Now Outpace the Attack's Toll
The new bell's focus on illness deaths lands at a stark moment for the department. In September 2023, post-9/11 illness deaths among FDNY members equaled the 343 firefighters lost on September 11, 2001, and that figure climbed above 370 by late 2024, according to Axios. Toxic dust exposure from Ground Zero recovery work has driven widespread long-term cancers and respiratory diseases among responders in the years since.
That toll has fueled broader tension over how much the city has disclosed about the health risks responders faced. Hoodline previously reported that FDNY firefighters and union leaders demanded transparency after 68 boxes of previously unshared Ground Zero toxic exposure test records turned up in a Queens office building, with union officials emphasizing that more than 400 firefighters have died from 9/11-related illnesses. The FDNY has separately continued expanding its physical memorials to those losses, unveiling dedicated panels at its Brooklyn headquarters in June honoring retired Bronx firefighters who served at Ground Zero and later died of related illnesses.
Beyond the Exhibits: A Living Collection
Inside the reopened firehouse, visitors will find an entrance floor adorned with enlarged patches from EMS and FDNY houses across the city, alongside tools, uniforms and a vintage apparatus collection. The museum cares for more than 30,000 historic artifacts and tens of thousands of archival materials, according to GothamJoe, including an 1872 sterling silver punch bowl set weighing 50 pounds and a taxidermied 1930s Brooklyn firehouse mascot dog named No-Name. Exhibits span two floors, covering everything from colonial-era bucket brigades to 20th-century motorized fire apparatus, and the museum has preserved FDNY history and legacy for more than 120 years.
As the city approaches the 25th anniversary of the attacks, memorial traditions honoring the FDNY's fallen have taken shape well beyond SoHo. Nationwide 9/11 memorial stair climbs, standardized at 2,200 steps to represent the 110 stories of the World Trade Center, have participants carry photo badges of specific fallen FDNY responders, a tradition Hoodline detailed in coverage of an Ohio fire department's climb ahead of the anniversary. The SoHo museum's reopening adds a permanent, hyper-local counterpart to those traveling tributes — a firehouse built in 1904 now carrying both the city's oldest firefighting artifacts and its newest reckoning with what Ground Zero service has cost.
