Fire officials said they're unlikely to determine what caused the blaze that destroyed a Hudson Valley barn where Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau stored some family heirlooms.
"It spread very quickly," East Fishkill Police Lt. Doug Lucy told the New York Daily News. "It was an old wooden barn, and when those things go, those things go very fast."
The fire broke out in a 100-year-old barn used for storage at the Morgenthau family's 272-acre Fishkill Farms in Dutchess County, 60 miles north of New York City. One firefighter suffered a minor injury.
The Wednesday afternoon blaze destroyed farm equipment and a book collection of Morgenthau's parents.
"We have friends in Poughkeepsie and in Brewster who saw the smoke," neighbor Dianne Averill told The News.
The extensive damage makes finding the cause unlikely, fire officials said.
Morgenthau's father Henry Morgenthau Jr. bought the property back in 1913. During World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill met at the farm to discuss strategy. Morgenthau's father, Henry, was FDR's treasury secretary.
