April 22th, 1989...The time was approximately 3:30pm when a fire broke out in in the Saratoga Springs, New York Jamesway Department Store. 

The fire was said to have originated in the toy aisle. The employees tried to extinguish the flames, but were unable to contain it, and spread very quickly.
It didn't take long before the entire store was engulfed in flames and within hours there was nothing left, but a pile of smoldering rubble.

When it was all said and done, it had caused $1,000,000 in property damages and over 60 store employees were left without jobs.
The Jamesway Dept. store, located on West Avenue in Saratoga Springs, was built in 1966 and didn't have a sprinkler system.

The pictures below were taken from a video that I had shot on a Sony 8mm camcorder.
I wasn't able to get in very close and the zoom caused a lot of blurry & shaky footage, but you can see it was a pretty
hectic scene.

Jamesway Department Store Fire in Saratoga Springs, NY on April 22, 1989 (Click for larger resolution images) Pictures by Matthew Henzel 5/22/89

 

Jamesway to Replace Store Destroyed by Fire*
Here's a link to a related Schenectady Gazette article from April 25th, 1989
*This never happened by the way. It was cleared out and never rebuilt.

Jamesway on YouTube

Here's an old Jamesway TV commercial from 1987	Jamesway went out of business in 1995

 

BROUGHT TO YOU BY

The original Video Game collecting and preservation website since 1996.