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Anyone who has ever been to New York knows the scaffolding you often have to walk under on the sidewalks. They are familiar structures even to those who have never been to New York, because they are all decorated in the same way and form the backdrop for many photos and films of the city.
They are not exactly scaffolding, not in the sense we usually mean it, i.e. a series of single or multi-level scaffolding used to carry out construction work. The so-called sidewalk sheds — literally “sidewalk sheds,” while scaffolding is more commonly referred to as “scaffolding” — are scaffolding used to let people pass underneath while walking on the sidewalks. They serve to protect them from falling debris or other materials from the facades of buildings: a fairly common occurrence in New York due to the presence of many old buildings and a lot of maintenance and renovation work, and all the more dangerous in one of the most densely populated cities in the world .
The historical reasons for the exceptional presence of these urban structures in the New York area date back to a law introduced in the early 1980s – Local Law 10 – following the death of a girl who was struck by a piece of brickwork while walking on a Manhattan street was hit. But they also point to other factors that, over time, have made it economically cheaper for those who must comply with this law, which has since been amended, to pay to rent scaffolding for pedestrian protection for longer periods than the cost of necessary ones facade repairs.
It’s a phenomenon that particularly affects the neighborhoods of Manhattan, but also Brooklyn, the Bronx and Queens. And it’s been a hot topic for years, because the scaffolding, which collectively spans more than 300 miles of New York City sidewalks, reduces the brightness and width of the sidewalks, obscures the markings of the site and is judged by many people to be a thing aesthetically unappealing .
A facade of the Flatiron Building in Manhattan, between 23rd Street, Fifth Avenue and Broadway (Wikimedia)
According to the New York City Department of Buildings (DOB), the city’s planning authority, the amount of scaffolding on sidewalks has tripled in the past twenty years. And at least a third of all scaffolding on city sidewalks relates to the law’s impact on building facades, not construction or maintenance initiated for other reasons.
Essentially, the conspicuous presence of the scaffolding is at least partly due to the findings of inspections conducted in connection with the New York City Facade Inspection Safety Program, an extension of Local Law 11 of 1998 (itself an update of Local Law 11 of 1998). Law 10), which requires that the exterior walls of buildings higher than six stories be inspected every five years. If the building to be inspected passes security checks, the sidewalks must be scaffolded to protect passers-by while the facade repair is carried out. However, there is no deadline by which the work must be completed.
It is therefore quite common for these temporary scaffoldings to remain in place for years – in some cases as many as ten – while work slowly progresses or is halted for some reason. In fact, it is cheaper for building owners to pay the rent of scaffolding or any fines for not starting the work after new inspections, rather than paying the cost of getting it completed quickly. A goal that, according to some interpretations of the data, may have also been made more difficult over the past two years due to the various effects of the pandemic.
The first regular facade inspection law was introduced in 1980 by then-New York City Mayor Ed Koch. The year before, 17-year-old Grace Gold, a freshman at Columbia University’s Barnard College, died after being struck by a piece of terracotta masonry that broke from the fall of a college building as she was walking down 115th Street. Upper West Side. Local Law 10 is a sensible law because it’s designed to protect people, the New York Times wrote in 2020, only that many builders “simply chose to put up scaffolding rather than do the more expensive facade work.”
A combination of factors has made it possible to comply with legal regulations in recent decades without having to urgently renovate the facades. And that has led to scaffolding becoming a familiar and recognizable element of the urban context. Current laws prohibit the use of external scaffolding panels for advertising messages unless the scaffolding covers areas lawfully managed by the premises owners and already occupied by signage.
A Barnes & Noble bookstore in Manhattan, between 46th Street and Fifth Avenue (Wikimedia)
According to insider estimates, demand for construction scaffolding in New York supports an industry worth a total of $1 billion a year. The law “has what turned a craft activity into an industry,” said the owner of a building renovation company in 2016, explaining that of that billion dollars, “200 million will go in scaffolding along the sidewalks” and the rest in scaffolding of other types and in work.
Over the years, the city has attempted to make the scaffolding more aesthetically pleasing, or at least consistent in color. According to an order from former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who served from 2002 to 2013, the plywood frames that go on top of the scaffolding are coated in most cases dark green (the exact designation is Hunter Green 1390, manufactured by North Paint Company Brunswick, New Jersey).
There have been attempts in the past to beautify the scaffolding or build alternative constructions. In a 2019 public initiative, about 200 meters of scaffolding cladding on the south side of the Google Building in Manhattan was used by the nonprofit ArtBridge as a canvas for paintings by emerging artists.
Even earlier, in 2011, the City of New York held a competition for alternative scaffolding designs, which was won by a University of Pennsylvania architecture student. His alternative structure, called Urban Umbrella, was more Gothic and incorporated an LED light system, but was unsuccessful as large-scale developments were considered prohibitively expensive. Much was also said about the construction during the presentation of the project with Mayor Bloomberg: It happened on a rainy day and since the scaffolding had not yet been waterproofed, there was water ingress.
Alternate scaffolding was erected in front of the 100 Broadway office building in the Lower Manhattan area on December 7, 2011 (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
US journalist Matthew Yglesias recently covered New York’s sidewalk scaffolding in his Slow Boring newsletter, asking what makes it a quintessentially New York phenomenon that is lacking in other cities around the world. The first reason is that New York is trivially full of buildings taller than six stories: the difference, however, is that the laws mandate the use of scaffolding as a safety measure, while other cities in the world allow the use of handrails , which are cheaper and less conspicuous.
Another reason is that New York’s facade laws are particularly strict and apply indiscriminately to many different cases. For example, they do not take into account the age or materials of the building, although the facades of newer buildings present fewer security risks than those of older buildings or those built with terracotta parts. In contrast to New York, cities such as Chicago or Cincinnati plan inspections at different intervals – even every 12 years – depending on the age and construction materials of the buildings.
Then there is another factor affecting occupational health and safety, and in particular a New York law informally referred to as the “Scaffolding Act” and considered a relevant reason for the very high cost of facade repairs in New York (and hence an indirect cause of delays) the works are viewed). Under the prevailing interpretation of this 1885 law, employers of companies operating on construction sites have an “essentially unlimited” responsibility for the safety of workers, writes Yglesias.
In practice, this liability has in the past increased the costs for companies to take out insurance, since in the event of accidents there are no legal defenses for the employer and the procedures only serve to quantify the compensation. It is a unique and quite extraordinary case of job protection in the country, Yglesias points out, considering that the rights of construction workers in 49 US states, and also of all non-construction workers in New York, are protected by national regulations of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration ( OSHA), the government department that deals with safety standards in the workplace.
One could argue that all of these exceptions are appropriate, Yglesias concludes, “but I don’t think New Yorkers fear for their lives walking through downtown Chicago” or “believe non-construction workers are among unacceptable in their state.” working conditions”. Furthermore, it’s not certain whether these are exceptions that improve safety: according to a 2014 report by Cornell University, the decision to attribute strict legal liability to employers has made New York construction sites less safe , because it makes workers less careful.