Fire-Damaged Brooklyn Heights Gristedes: Pharmacy To Reopen?

While many comments have been made about the freshness of Gristedes' honey-glazed ham and baked goods, it's occurring to hundreds of Brooklyn Heights residents that they relied on the burnt-out Henry Street store for their pharmaceutical needs.

Several years ago Gristedes bought out the drug store roughly across the street, gaining both the idiosyncratic assistant pharmacist (now gone) and the pharmacy's customers, many of them elderly residents of the Cadman towers.

With this in mind, a representative of Gristedes told the Brooklyn Eagle Wednesday: “We aim to have at least the pharmacy opened up by Friday at noon." They hope to make prescriptions available to consumers to be picked up at the 101 Henry St. location, or delivered to homes or other Gristedes locations, they said.

Meanwhile, the cleanup continues. Contractors replaced glass that had been smashed by the Fire Department during Tuesday evening's fire and washed down surfaces.


Hundreds of bags of damaged goods were thrown into bins or piled on the sidewalk.


Ash-covered computers were dumped like damaged tomatoes.


Independent contractors came in bunches. Someone yelled out that Gristedes was hiring clean-up crew -- no questions asked.


But a union worker told the Eagle that he and his coworkers were notified by their union sometime around noon on Wednesday to stop working inside the store due to the still “unsafe working conditions” inside. “They had to get everybody out,” he said.

Unsafe conditions may not have held back some creative midnight shoppers, however... A commentator said on an earlier McBrooklyn post about the fire, "Gristedes got completely cleaned out sometime after sundown to sunrise..."

Photos by MK Metz

- Brooklyn Heights Gristedes Fire Dismal Aftermath
- Cleanup Begins at Brooklyn Heights Gristedes