After Boardwalk Empire, he appeared in Miracle Workers, Hubie Halloween, The King of Staten Island, and a range of other projects. He did a voice role in the animated series Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai. He appeared in limited runs of theatrical productions. In 2024, he was attacked on a Manhattan street — punched by a stranger who then ran off, in an incident that received significant coverage because it was, by any standard, a disturbing event involving a well-known public figure. He recovered.
He remained in New York. He remained, by all available evidence, a person whose identity was composed of more than the acting career — former firefighter, former FDNY member, civic participant in the city that had shaped him.
## The Memorial and What Remains
The five plaques on the exterior of 363 Broome Street record the names of the Engine 55 members who died on September 11, 2001. The building itself continues to operate as an active firehouse. Engine 55 still runs calls in its Lower Manhattan territory. The neighborhood has changed — NoLita has gentrified substantially since 1980, the Little Italy of Buscemi’s firehouse years is smaller and more touristic than it was — but the red brick and limestone building on Broome Street is still there, still housing the company he served in, still working.
The National September 11 Memorial and Museum, opened in 2011 and expanded in subsequent years, preserves the names of the 2,977 people killed in the attacks and documents the response — including the FDNY’s response — in institutional detail. The documentation includes the extraordinary losses of the department: 343 members, from firefighters and paramedics to chaplains and the department’s Chief of Special Operations, who died when the towers collapsed. The memorial does not rank the response; it records it. The 343 who died were doing the same job that Engine 55 was doing when it lost five of its members, and that job was the same job that Buscemi had done in that building from 1980 to 1984.