An illegal social club in the basement of a massive apartment building in Mount Vernon — just six miles from the Bronx — could have been another Happy Land fire, according to Mount Vernon officials.
Late last month, Mount Vernon’s Fire Commissioner Teddy Beale got tipped to an unlicensed hangout set up in the basement of 257 1st St, underneath a laundromat and at least 20 residential apartments in the building above.
When Beale and local police raided the rickety joint, they found conditions that brought to mind the deadly Bronx blaze of 1990. Eighty-seven people died inside the Happy Land, an illegal social club, after getting trapped by a raging inferno.