Escape Route -- Fire Escape in San Francisco, California
by Darin Volpe
Title
Escape Route -- Fire Escape in San Francisco, California
Artist
Darin Volpe
Medium
Photograph - Photography
Description
Climbing like ivy of iron, nothing says urbanization quite like the fire escape.
Chapter 470, Section 25 of the New York City Code passed on April 17, 1860. It was a response to a fire in a six-story tenement house, where the building's stairway burned away and fire department ladders could only reach the fourth floor. Ten women and children died in the fire. The legislation required that all buildings designed for more than eight families have some form of fire-proof masonry stairs or “fire-proof balconies on each story...connected by fire-proof stairs” - it was the first law requiring a modern fire escape.
Only a month after the City of New York became the first to mandate fire escapes, Henry Baker and James McGill filed U.S. Patent 28,340 for the first modern fire escape. Within a few years, most major cities adopted laws also requiring fire escapes on multi-story buildings.
Today, the fire escape is more a cultural feature than one of safety. What was invented as a means to escape has become a place for flowerpots and furniture in places where a backyard is only found on TV. Some are original to century-an-a-half old buildings, and many have been neglected to a point worse than uselessness as corrosion, rust, and worn anchor points have made them unsafe relics of a bygone era.
Uploaded
August 13th, 2019
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