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Long before Jet Direct Mortgage took over the northeast corner of Smith Avenue and West Main Street in Bay Shore, this building stood at that same location.
(Today photo below.)
1 Smith Avenue was a 14-family apartment house with four retail spaces on the ground floor. It was built in 1917 and destroyed by a massive, eight-alarm fire in February 1992.
This picture, provided to greaterbayshore.com by Harry A. Antario, was taken in October 1979 by his father, Harry J. Antario, who had purchased the property in 1976.
“I remember as a little boy I used to paint the apartments for him,” said the younger Antario.
Harry A. Antario took over the building’s management after his dad died in 1991.
“On a very cold night in February 1992, a fire started in one of the stores and because the building was designed with no fire stops, the flames shot to the top of the building and across the mid floors,” Antario said last week.
“It was an eight alarm fire” that took seven hours to bring under control, he recalled, with firefighters getting injured.
“We sold the property a few years later.”
