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Fire destroys Masters Market Street building
By Joe Gorman
YOUNGSTOWN
The charred mannequin lying Tuesday amid the rubble of the former Masters Tuxedo building was a far cry from the building’s heyday, when it supplied the formal wear for a presidential inauguration.
The building at 3600 Market St., which has been vacant since 2002, was destroyed by a fire that crews were first called to about 11:15 p.m. Monday and was still smoldering Tuesday morning.
The building at one time was also home to a sporting goods store and a bowling alley before it became Masters Tuxedo, said Mike Durkin, head of city code enforcement. Durkin said it should take about a week to clean up the remains left over from the fire.
Fire crews needed a backhoe from the city street department to knock down the walls and roof so firefighters could get to spots where the fire was still burning in the basement and wall.
Fire investigator Capt. Kurt Wright said the basement was a big headache for firefighters, because it was so large. Smoke was seeping out of the basement through the concrete as well as tar, which bubbled up out and was still smoking before the backhoe went to work. A fire department ladder truck was on hand to hose down the areas that the backhoe cleared.
Wright said the building has been the scene of other fires in the past but they were able to be put out quickly. Wright said the cause of the fire is most likely arson. There was evidence inside an undamaged back portion of the building of people being inside, as there were food containers and empty bottles and other debris inside.
At one of those earlier fires, firefighters on the scene Tuesday reminisced about their colleagues exiting the basement in tuxedos. Wright said the basement was still full of tuxedos at the time of the fire.
When Bill Clinton was elected president in 1992, Masters supplied all the formal wear for his inauguration, according to Vindicator files.
Also according to Vindicator files, Masters Tuxedo was taken over by a new owner in 1998 who closed the store in 2002 along with two other area stores because of what he termed a sluggish economy. Since then, another Masters store has opened at 5330 Market St. in Boardman.
The city became the owner of the building in 2010 after it went through a foreclosure. There was a plan in 2014 to turn it into a training facility for certified-nursing assistants, but that plan never came to fruition.