Ralph Feldman, retired FDNY marshal known for memorial statue, dies at 79
Feldman's statue at the Cathedral of St. John The Divine in Morningside Heights memorializes the 12 firefighters killed in a building collapse at 7 E. 23rd St. in 1966. He was a firefighter for 27 years before retiring in 1985.
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Friday, February 6, 2015, 11:44 PM
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SUZANNE ROZDEBARalph Feldman, a former city police officer and fire marshal, died Thursday.
Ralph Feldman, a former city fire marshal who created a well-known statue memorializing fallen smoke-eaters, died Thursday. He was 79.
Feldman was a firefighter for 27 years before retiring in 1985. He served as a city police officer before joining the FDNY.
His sculpture memorializing the 12 firefighters killed in a building collapse at 7 E. 23rd St. in 1966 is on permanent display at the Cathedral of St. John The Divine in Morningside Heights.
The sculpture features a 30-foot charred wooden beam grasped by steal bars resembling fingers on a hand. All the materials were gathered from buildings destroyed by fire.
“He had a collection of pictures of fires from all over the city,” said longtime friend John Knox, 80.
“He used to have hundreds of thousands of pictures of before and after of fires all over the city.”
Feldman, born in the Bronx, began buying up distressed buildings in the Lower East Side and Williamsburg, Brooklyn, in the 1960s.
“To him it was a labor of love, taking a building that was going to be torn down and turning it into something people could live in,” Knox said.
“He did a lot of the work himself.”
He still owned multiple properties at the time of his death.
“He’s a Lower East Side icon,” Knox said. “People know him for the good things he did, bringing the neighborhood back.”
Feldman had been battling lung cancer and emphysema and used an oxygen tank in recent years, friends said.
He died at his longtime East Village home Thursday morning.
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