The Emergency Egress

March 29, 2016 12:03 PM

Balcony Seats to the City: "Officially of course, the urban fire escape is primarily an emergency exit, but in New York, this prosaic adornment of countless five- and six-story apartment houses has assumed myriad other functions: faux backyards, platforms for criminal getaways, oases for marginalized smokers and makeshift bedrooms popular during an age before air-conditioning."

Fire escapes are a physical reminder of how we evolved past being a culture that says, “Here’s a rope. Good luck, buddy!”

Additional Links
* Slate: The Evolution of the Modern Emergency Exit
* Untapped Cities: Cities 101: What Are the Rules on Fire Escapes in NYC?
* Apartment Therapy: A History of New Yorkers' Love/Hate Relationship with the Fire Escape
* History: The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire
* PBS American Experience: Triangle Fire
* Building Safety Journal: How Fire Disaster Shaped the Evolution of the New York City Building Code

posted by zarq (23 comments total)

As a comic book reading kid in suburban Virginia, I always assumed they were primarily for superhero use.
posted by selfnoise at 12:07 PM on March 29, 2016 [5 favorites]

I've never lived anywhere with fire escapes so they always seemed very romantic. I assume that in real life they're actually filthy and terrifying.
posted by octothorpe at 12:21 PM on March 29, 2016 [4 favorites]

Grace Kelly knows what fire escapes are for.
posted by jeremias at 12:47 PM on March 29, 2016 [2 favorites]

I've never lived anywhere with a fire escape either. I saw them on Sesame Street when I was little, and I read about them in A Tree Grows In Brooklyn as a young teenager. To a kid from the wide beige suburbs, fire escapes seemed very New York. If I saw them in a TV show or a movie, I knew that the setting was a "real" city--an old city. A city with layers and stories, histories and secrets.

They also seemed like sort of built-in forts; unofficial spaces that could be used for a variety of things, but mostly for sort of getting away from the indoors (without really going outdoors). I think I got this from reading about Francie Nolan and her Saturday-afternoon book-and-candy-on-the-fire-escape ritual.

The first time I set foot on an actual fire escape was at a hostel in Munich. After a long day of sight-seeing, my husband and I sat on the fire escape in the cool, evening air as the lights and sounds of the city drifted up to us from below. It felt private, even though it wasn't. We talked, and laughed, and I felt like a for-reals Adult Who Had Finally Traveled.

I've lived in apartments with balconies for my entire adult life, and yet I've never had that secret-grown-up-fort feeling, that this-is-my-space feeling on a balcony. Whether they were dusty repositories of old patio furniture and failed potted plants, or frequently-used, well-maintained spaces, it just wasn't the same.
posted by Flipping_Hades_Terwilliger at 12:48 PM on March 29, 2016 [5 favorites]

This post is great. It also prompted me to look around for an online museum of fire escape counterbalance weights. Which, to my shock, doesn't seem to exist yet. But, that somehow lead me to this thoroughly enjoyable MS thesis, Fire Escapes in Urban America. Neat!
posted by eotvos at 12:49 PM on March 29, 2016 [6 favorites]

I used to live with a Russian guy. Our building actually had two fire escapes if I'm remembering right, one in the front and one in the back, and we'd hang out on the back one all the time. My roommate, proud of his Russianness, had a samovar, which we'd fill with hot coals to serve hot Tsar Nicholas tea in the evening.

It was all very picturesque until our landlord told us that we weren't supposed to hang out on the fire escape for risk of it collapsing, which didn't make either of us feel exactly comfortable with our escape options. Especially since, in retrospect, we were sort of burning hot coals right next to the building.

Well, we were pretty young.
posted by teponaztli at 12:50 PM on March 29, 2016 [5 favorites]

eotvos, that thesis is FANTASTIC. Thanks very much for linking to it!
posted by zarq at 12:58 PM on March 29, 2016 [1 favorite]

"It was all very picturesque until our landlord told us that we weren't supposed to hang out on the fire escape for risk of it collapsing, which didn't make either of us feel exactly comfortable with our escape options. "

Being from the Chicago area, I presume what fire escapes are mostly for is collapsing during too-rowdy parties.

But seriously, I love this post.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 1:08 PM on March 29, 2016 [2 favorites]

This is so good.

I've never lived in a place with a fire escape either, although I once slept in a hotel room that had one. I looked at it wistfully but I didn't dare actually set foot on it.
posted by Joe in Australia at 1:40 PM on March 29, 2016

I used to hang out on the fire escape all the time when I lived in NYC! Here's the exact fire escape, thanks to Google Street view. It was like a little balcony where i'd sit and read, hovering above the SoHo crowds meandering around below.
posted by vacapinta at 2:18 PM on March 29, 2016 [3 favorites]

I loved my fire escape when I lived in the attic of a converted old Victorian house in Iowa. I enjoyed many warm evenings sitting out on the fire escape/roof and watching life in rural Iowa below me. Squirrels in the trees, kids on bikes, cows lowing in a pasture nearby.

Hooray for rural fire escapes! Little balconies on the prairie.
posted by Elly Vortex at 2:52 PM on March 29, 2016 [2 favorites]

One of my favorite pastimes in the late 70s was sitting on a fire escape smoking a joint.
posted by Splunge at 4:14 PM on March 29, 2016

I wouldn't have thought there was room for a barbecue.
posted by Joe in Australia at 4:24 PM on March 29, 2016

Being from the Chicago area, I presume what fire escapes are mostly for is collapsing during too-rowdy parties.

I walk by the site of the 2003 Wrightwood Patio Collapse almost every day and think about it a lot. What's interesting is that it was a New Trier High School graduates party. So some of most privileged and high achieving kids in the Chicagoland area. I assume that this is a major contributing factor to the disaster as those kids were likely unaware of how crappy porches in Chicago could be unlike the lived experience of many of the residents in the city who grew up living in three ups.

The other day I was in the building next to the Board of Trade Building which has what seems like infinite exterior fire escapes and was wondering what the tallest fire escape in America was and could find no information.
posted by srboisvert at 4:47 PM on March 29, 2016 [2 favorites]

When I was a rowdy youth, we used to bike around and climb other people's fire escapes to smoke cigarettes at an altitude. We were assholes.

Now that I'm a bit older I do spend a good amount of my time hanging around on our own, and friends'. It's a balcony stripped of the bourgeois faux-gondola vibe.
posted by constantinescharity at 9:52 PM on March 29, 2016

Had a couple fire escapes outside bedroom windows in SF flats as a kid. It was mostly too cold to spend much enjoyable time on them, but if you can climb out your window onto a thing, you will. I was always intrigued by the counterweights that kept the bottom rungs up in the air until you began to put weight on them, & played around with that a bit. No one ever seemed to mind. Whenever I stay in an old hotel, I will investigate the fire escape. Great place to have that last cigarette of the day, on vacation. Sorta miss that since I quit smoking. The Menger in San Antonio comes to mind as a great fire escape for people watching.

Fire escapes also occasionally provide roof access, and who doesn't like roofs? My first wife & I climbed up onto the roof of our hotel the night of our honeymoon. Think we were on the 7th of 10 floors- tallest building in Lake Wales, Florida. As a teenager, me & some friends discovered an accessible fire escape that got us (after a hairy vertical stretch at the end) onto the 4th floor roof of a building above Polk st, in SF which in the 70's was where all the REAL weirdos went on a Saturday night. Went on a double date with a band-mate & twin sisters, & we got up there in our best suits/dresses & heels. On acid. I wonder how those girls are?

Another time on that same roof, we got to watch two exhibitionists screwing in their 2nd floor bay window, so you never know what wonders you may find on a fire escape.
posted by Devils Rancher at 10:20 PM on March 29, 2016 [2 favorites]

I got hit in the head with a fire escape counterbalance weight during a snowstorm once.
posted by aniola at 12:37 AM on March 30, 2016 [1 favorite]

That was how I learned about fire escape counterbalance weights.
posted by aniola at 12:38 AM on March 30, 2016 [8 favorites]

I stayed on the 4th floor of a hotel in Vancouver, BC not too long ago that had stern warnings both at the front desk and on the hallway-end fire escape windows against smoking on the fire escapes. It also had some sort of television show or movie being filmed there during that weekend which involved some guy getting busted in a hotel room with bad guys or loose women or something and making an escape out the fire escape.

Fire escapes have always been things I have mostly seen in movies, or noted their existence on a building I am in but never more than that. I have never hung out on one. I think if I lived in a city that had urban stuff happening worth sitting and taking in, I probably would.
posted by hippybear at 12:57 AM on March 30, 2016

> I've never lived anywhere with fire escapes so they always seemed very romantic. I assume that in real life they're actually filthy and terrifying.

Naw, I've lived in cities with fire escapes for a loooong time now, and I pretty much love them.
posted by desuetude at 2:51 PM on March 30, 2016

from here, why would a city with that many burglars give them backdoor ladders? and aren't people really scared of having them? In London, you'd get the worst results immediately. Or is New York a city without really any burglars?
posted by maiamaia at 2:21 PM on March 31, 2016

maiamaia, you just lock your door/window. Also, being on a fire escape makes vibrations from your feet carry thuddy noises -- they're not a thing you can easily clamber up or down quietly.
posted by desuetude at 6:42 AM on April 1, 2016

I stayed on the top floor of a hostel in Toronto once and went out onto the fire escape and dumped a bunch of helicopter seeds.
posted by aniola at 8:01 PM on April 2, 2016 [1 favorite]