The Night British-Held New York Burned

Less than a week after British troops marched into New York in September 1776, a large part of the city they had just captured went up in flames.

250 years later, historians still do not agree on who started the fire.

The blaze broke out shortly after midnight on Sept. 21 near Whitehall Slip at the southern tip of Manhattan.

According to an eyewitness account by prisoner John Joseph Henry, the fire began in the Fighting Cocks Tavern.

From there, dry weather, strong winds, and tightly packed wooden buildings helped the flames race through the city.

By the time a change in the wind helped bring the fire under control, an estimated 400 to 1,000 buildings had been destroyed.

Among the losses was the original Trinity Church.

Just a block away, St. Paul’s Chapel survived.

That survival would take on added meaning more than two centuries later. The chapel also endured the collapse of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001 — 225 years after the Great Fire of New York, in the same month.

The cause of the 1776 fire remains disputed.

British officials suspected that Americans had deliberately set the blaze after abandoning the city. Others argued that the fire may have started accidentally and spread because of the conditions.

No definitive answer has ever settled the question.

What is known is that, within days of taking control of New York, the British found themselves occupying a city scarred by one of the most destructive fires in its early history.