by ANDREW STRICKLER
A 78-year-old woman who lived alone for decades in an elegant Upper East Side building died in a fire there early yesterday, neighbors and fire officials said.
Several people who live in the four-story, limestone facade building at 111 E. 79th St. said they first smelled smoke around 6:30 a.m. and called 911.
The fire department responded quickly to a blaze in the home of Marilyn Kaytor who lived on the second floor.
Firefighters who broke into the apartment to fight the fire found Kaytor dead inside, according to a fire department spokesman. The fire was quickly extinguished, and no one else was hurt.
A fire department source said the fire appeared to have been started when a lit cigarette was dropped on a mattress, although fire marshals were still completing the investigation late yesterday.
Several neighbors said Kaytor was rarely seen coming or going from her rented apartment, and some voiced surprise that the apartment was occupied.
"I live right next door, and I never spoke to her," said Mary Dubois, 47. "Everyone here, we know each other, but I never met her, never really saw her. No one did," she said.
Dubois, an investment banker, said she was awake and had just prepared coffee when smoke began pouring into her apartment through vents. "I grabbed my cat and started banging on everyone's doors," she said.
Presume Baptiste, the superintendent of the building, said Kaytor moved in some time in the 1960s or 1970s and had been in poor health in recent months.
Fire officials said the first 911 call came in at 6:50 a.m. and the blaze was fully contained at 7:35 a.m. The fire was contained to Kaytor's apartment, the fire official said, but smoke and water may have damaged other areas of the building.
"Everything melted. The ceiling, everything's damaged," Baptiste said. "It was a beautiful apartment."
A 1997 article in The New York Times said the French Renaissance style building, along with its twin next door at 109 E. 79th St., were built in 1909.
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