A facility used by the Museum of Chinese in America in New York City (MOCA) was engulfed by a devastating fire last week that likely destroyed the entirety of the museum's collection. 

The impacted facility, at 70 Mulberry Street, is owned by the City of New York and consists of a repurposed former school that "educated generations of immigrants before becoming a cherished cultural landmark in the neighborhood," The New York Times reports, and is in fact separate from the museum's galleries, which are designed by Maya Lin Studio and Bialosky New York, opened in 2009, and are located several blocks away at 215 Centre Street. The museum's history dates back over three decades as the Chinatown History Project. One firefighter and a bystander were injured in the blaze with non-life threatening injuries. 

Museum officials report that the museum's galleries at 215 Centre Street remain open for business and are very much welcoming visitors. A GoFundMe drive has been initiated to help support the museum as it recovers from the fire. 

According to The Times, it is believed that the museum's entire 85,000-item collection was lost in the blaze, which took place along the upper floors of the wood frame and masonry building. During the blaze, the building's roof collapsed and the structure suffered significant damage, so much so that the building has been declared unfit for occupancy. For this reason, museum officials have yet to fully investigate the wreckage to see if anything has survived. It is likely that items that can be salvaged will be heavily damaged due to the flames and the water used to put out the fire. 

The museum's collection includes a wide array of irreplaceable everyday items that had been largely donated by community members, including old photos, letters written to relatives back home in China, ticket stubs, traditional wedding dresses from the early 1900s, and other items of particular historical significance. Speaking with The New York Times, MOCA President Nancy Yao Maasbach, said that “one hundred percent of the museum’s collection, other than what is on view” was lost in the blaze. 

A silver lining: roughly 35,000 of the museum's items had recently been digitized and exist backed-up on an off-site server.  

Editor's Note: A previous version of this story mistakenly stated that the fire impacted the MOCA's main museum spaces. The fire only impacted the museum's archives, which are located in a separate structure than the galleries. We regret the error.