Fire escapes, the clunky metal accessories to buildings constructed in response to industrial building-code reform, have become an iconic part of the urban landscape. They serve purposes as numerous as their pop-cultural cameos. Part emergency exit, part makeshift patio, the fire escape has played an integral role in shaping the development of the cities whose buildings bear them. It continues to impact the urban landscape today, in ways that few could have imagined when they were first thought up Tony wooed Maria from one in West Side Story. Rosario Dawson belted from one in Rent. They became just another piece in a gritty urban jungle gym for the kids in The Get Down. Police procedurals regularly feature guys fleeing (or entering) by means of them.
By the mid-19th century, New York City was overcrowded, oppressively loud, and unequipped to support the flood of new arrivals to the industrializing city. Cheaply built tenements stretched higher into the air than ever before, filled with people who worked in equally overfilled factories. These buildings were firetraps, made of cheap materials that burned easily. They grew more deadly the higher they climbed. When fires raged, there were typically only two forms of escape: narrow interior stairs, or the roof.
. Deadly fires ripped through the tenements in the poorest and most underserved neighborhoods, wreaking havoc and taxing city resources. The body count spurred the creation of building codes. The population of New York doubled each decade from 1800 to 1880, and the scale of the challenges the city was facing was both monumental and unique.
The first rules were imposed in the early 1860s when the New York City Department of Buildings ordered the implementation of an additional form of egress on tenements with more than eight families above the first floor. Landlords didn’t want to add a set of fire-resistant interior stairs, because such a structure would reduce the amount of rentable space. The simplest solution was to find a way to get people out through their windows. The order called for a set of iron or wood stairs affixed to the exterior of a building, but this wasn’t enforced, and the concept of a “fire escape” was approached with a significant amount of creative license.
The real boon for fire escapes arrived in 1901, when a new set of regulations, passed with that year’s revision to the Tenement House Act, defined the structure with greater precision. A “fire escape” would now require an extra set of stairs, either inside or outside of a building, that was fireproof. If external, they had to be on the street-facing facade, and there were strict rules about the size of the balconies, the angle of the stairs, and the connections between them.
There was a problem with these exterior fire escapes, however. They were (and remain) tempting to repurpose for everyday use. In the early 20th century, blocking fire escapes was punishable by a fine of up to $10 and 10 days in jail—no small sum in those days. But the risk didn’t outweigh the benefits; fire escapes had already become an extension of tenants’ homes. They were transformed into porches, gardens, no-cost storage units. They offered outdoor respite from the oppressive heat of city summers. Fires still seemed hypothetical, and interior space was at a premium. Why let such valuable square footage go to waste?
So city dwellers reshaped the fire escape, and in so doing it changed urban life. Fire escapes became makeshift jungle gyms for kids and offered a place to catch a breeze while hanging the wash to dry. but it’s normal (if still illegal) to see fire escapes turned into vegetable gardens, smoking patios, and makeshift bike racks.
Repurposing fire escapes is one timeless tradition associated with these architectural structures. Another ritual: drawing the ire of landlords. When the 1901 restrictions required that fire escapes become larger, they had to cover more of a building’s facade as a result. This created even more space for tenants to expand, while building owners worried that the fire escapes would reduce the value of their investments.
By 1930, fire escapes were still being constructed, but few people saw them as safety devices first. They had become architectural accessories that might be repurposed for escape, not the other way around.
fire escapes climbing up buildings like invasive ivy,
The metal vines have seen the city grow, seen it change, and they have played an integral role in its evolution. The seeds of contemporary New York germinated on fire-escape balconies and grew below their entwining shadows.
Most fire escapes have the sharp edges of utilitarian simplicity, but many are ornate works of decorative art designed to be functional jewelry, albeit for urban infrastructure.
The fire escape is antiquated and vestigial, but it also represents, in a way, the beginnings of architectural modernism. The harsh lines of these utilitarian metal structures anticipated the straight edges of the glass-and-steel skyscrapers that would erupt around them.