During a speech on the House floor Thursday afternoon, Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-D.C., lamented the “horrendous, hot and unusual” four-alarm fire that engulfed Frager’s Hardware on Wednesday night.

The fire “stirred up something in me like the emotion I felt when Eastern Market went up in flames,” Norton said and compared destruction of the neighborhood institution to “losing a friend, a human friend that is.”

Norton described the “pungent smell” she encountered around her Capitol Hill home and said she had trouble navigating Pennsylvania Avenue on Wednesday night after the congressional baseball social at Nationals Park.

She also praised Frager’s for the quirky, antique inventory squeezed throughout the store, noting that some of its goods may be “going out of style, but they are just what you need when you live in a home in the historic district.”

Norton plans to visit the store again this evening to check out the damage, particularly Frager’s large, outdoor nursery — her favorite spot in the store — which was spared the worst of the fire.