How The Flawed Fire Escape Took Over New York - Cheddar Explains

you can't separate classic new york architecture from the fire escape they're all over stroll down any old street and you'll probably see something like this or this or this and you've also seen them in classic movies like west side story and if you live in an apartment with one you essentially have six square feet of free balcony of course the fire escape has made it to other cities across the globe but arguably no city has embraced it like new york city but this iconic aspect of the new york aesthetic has a dark side in the 1700s london's population was booming to house this increasing population buildings grew taller but with these new heights came new challenges for fire control so english inventors tried to come up with different ways to make these buildings safer at the time the quickest way out of a fire was to run up to the roof and across to another building which didn't really work because fire spread so quickly that the other building was probably on fire too they also invented these rolling ladders canvas chutes and these winchable platforms among these solutions was the first fire escape although most early iterations look nothing like what we think of today and the fire escape remained a rarity so let's fast forward to the late 1800s and cross the atlantic to new york city it was a time of mass migration to the city mostly europeans looking for work in factories the industrial revolution had made it far more lucrative than ever before to have massive factories and companies needed workers these workers weren't paid enough to have much of a choice and so they had to live in whatever they could find which was the tenements a sprawling array of partitioned warehouses and forgotten decrepit row houses predictably this didn't end well more than half of all fires at the time occurred in the tenements one of the first incidents to galvanize the public was a blaze at 142 elm street on february 2nd 1860 when a bakery at the ground floor of a six-story wood frame tenement house home to 24 families caught fire and many people were injured or killed in response the new york government passed the act to provide against unsafe buildings in april of that year the law called for the construction of fireproof stairs in a brick or stone it said any louders or stairs from the upper stories if movable were to be made of iron and if not to be made of wood this is when the modern fire escape rears its head the exterior staircases were cheap to build and could easily be added to existing construction the fire escape invention seemed to be a simple and cost-efficient way to address the city requirement however the act was just one of many over the ensuing decades that due to vague warding lacks oversight and insufficient penalties didn't make that much of a difference laws such as the 1867 tenement act didn't stem the tide of poorly constructed buildings landlords and property owners willingly skimped on safety to save money according to curbed one woman was roasted to death on the landing of a fire escape because the fire escape stopped at the second floor even though there was very little proof fire escapes were a safe solution between 1900 and 1901 there were thousands of orders for new fire escapes the laws were very poorly enforced but that started to change when a series of deadly fires including a 1911 fire at the triangle shirtwaist company killed 146 garment workers most of them young women during the fire in the ash building many young women perish while trying to use the fire escape according to historian sarah warmile many of them crowded onto the 9th and 10th story fire escapes it soon warped with the heat of the fire and the weight of the workers and the reportedly flimsy and poorly anchored structure collapsed sending about 20 victims their deaths 100 feet below the ash report issued that year by the national fire protection association called fire escapes a pitiful delusion and began to systematically study better ways to get out of burning buildings by the time of the triangle shirtwaist company fire new york had roughly a thousand buildings over 10 stories tall all in need of proper means of exit in the event of a fire even though it had been proven that fire escapes weren't actually all that good at saving people they continued to be built because they were cheap and didn't modify existing structures the life safety code of 1927 recommended protected interior stairwells for all new construction a concept that has since become universally accepted but new york had been building fire escapes for decades by that point of course other cities that were going higher at the same time built outdoor fire escapes but no city embraced them like new york and other cities who hadn't gotten to the six plus story game that early could just build their buildings from scratch with the interior stairwells so developers and building owners kept building fire escapes until 1968 when a change to the new york city building code put an end to the practice new buildings were required to have sprinklers and interior stairwells landlords of older buildings had to hire a licensed professional to inspect the fire escapes every five years but for buildings that are six stories or smaller no such specific requirements exist beyond property owners being required by code to maintain their buildings in safe condition today some fire escapes are over a hundred years old most at least 50 and made of fragile iron in 2015 a young broadway star slipped and fell from a poorly maintained fire escape on the fourth floor and died in 2018 one person was killed and two others were injured when a piece of a fire escape broke off of a building in soho and fell seven stories of particular concern are the bolts that connect the fire escape to the building which are often corroded the national fire escape association has said that 75 of new york city fire escapes aren't up to code and 50 could cause safety incidents of course landlords weren't thinking about this a hundred something years ago when they were just trying to find a cheap way to placate the local government and they also probably didn't think that fire escapes would become such a part of new york culture practically every apartment owner with a fire escape has used it as a tiny garden a patio in the summer or an impromptu drying rack even though most landlords say it's not allowed new york architecture aficionados wax poetic about the fire escapes that adorn historic buildings although some officials have called for fire escapes to be removed around the city it likely won't happen not only would it be an absolutely monumental task but also many fire escapes are on historically protected buildings they're an intrinsic part of new york culture and many architecture advocates are fighting for their survival as we speak calling them an unchangeable part of the face of new york so while we wouldn't recommend sitting out on an ill-maintained fire escape you don't have to worry too much if this iconic part of new york history is going anywhere what do you guys think of fire escapes in new york city and around the world let us know in the comments and make sure you tune in to cheddar originals wednesdays at 8pm see you next time

Channel: Cheddar

Views: 603,022

Rating: 4.8990536 out of 5

Keywords: Cheddar, cheddar explores, cheddar explains, explainer, new york city, nyc, manhattan, new york, fire escape, fire escapes, new york fire escape, fire, architecture, design, city planning, urban planning, safety codes, house fire, apartment fire, skyscrapers, history, new york history, nyfd, fire department, firefighting, firefighter, construction, cities, infrastructure, design fails, are fire escapes safe, lower east side

Id: vPlS9bRJffA

Length: 8min 19sec (499 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 11 2021