{"id":10435,"date":"2016-06-29T13:15:13","date_gmt":"2016-06-29T17:15:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/phillyhistory.wpengine.com\/?p=10435"},"modified":"2016-07-07T20:01:22","modified_gmt":"2016-07-08T00:01:22","slug":"a-would-be-disaster-design-solution-the-iron-skeleton-fire-escape","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/2016\/06\/a-would-be-disaster-design-solution-the-iron-skeleton-fire-escape\/","title":{"rendered":"A Would-Be Disaster Design Solution: The Iron Skeleton Fire Escape"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Front<\/a>
Front Elevations of 102-104 N. Water Street, February 14, 1918 (PhillyHistory.org)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

How to safely exit a building on fire? The fire escape, of course.<\/p>\n

But what about before law required the familiar \u201ciron skeleton fire escape\u201d? In the greater part of the 19th century, when fire struck in the rising city, urbanites were at the mercy of fate. On more than one occasion, Philadelphia\u2019s garret sweatshops and New York\u2019s tenements went up in flames. Those trapped inside the upper stories perished in \u201cgalleries of certain death.\u201d<\/p>\n

Inventors heeded the call. In March 1849, the Franklin Institute exhibited for public admiration the model for \u201ca very ingenious contrivance,\u201d a \u201cnew fire-escape.\u201d No word as to how it might save lives, or if it ever did. Nor do we know exactly how many such contrivances, either ingenious or ridiculous, promised the trapped and doomed freedom to walk, jump or even fly to safety. But, as we saw in the case of Philadelphia’s Deadliest Fire<\/a>, even after buildings were equipped with exterior iron fire escapes, they sometimes contributed to fatal disasters.<\/p>\n

Philadelphia passed an ordinance creating a fire-escape regulatory board in 1876 and endowed it with the authority to order their installation \u201cupon such buildings as they may deem necessary\u2026 to secure life and property.” Three years later, Pennsylvania passed a sweeping law declaring that any building \u201cthree or more stories in height, shall be provided with a permanent, safe external means of escape therefrom in cases of fire.\u201d<\/p>\n

The list of seemed<\/em> comprehensive: \u201cEvery building used as a seminary, college, academy, hospital, asylum, or a hotel for the accommodation of the public, every storehouse, factory, manufactory, workshop of every kind, in which employees or operatives are usually employed at work in the third or higher story, every tenement house or building in which rooms or floors are usually let to lodgers or families, and every public school building.\u201d \u00a0But somehow the 1879 list missed theatres. No problem, historian Sara Wermeil tells us, that mistake was corrected in 1885.<\/p>\n

\"Pasquale<\/a>
Pasquale Nigro, Fire Escape, U.S. Patent filed, May 15,1908. (GooglePatent)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Benjamin<\/a>
Benjamin B. Oppenheimer,
Improvement in Fire-Escapes.
No. 221,855. Patented Nov; 18, 1879 (Google Patent)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But to some, a greater mistake lay in the assumption that the exterior iron fire escape would be effective. According to Wermeil, Philadelphia architect Samuel Sloan \u201ccondemned the \u2018iron ladders clamped against the wall\u2019 as \u2018worse than useless, because they are deceptive; giving the appearance of an escape without the reality.\u2019” They were, he wrote in 1868, \u201c\u2018a most stupid contrivance\u2019 because women, children, the aged and the disabled could not use them. With fires lapping out the window, he asked, \u2018would not those balconies be turned into gridirons to roast the unhappy victims?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Sloan\u2019s preference? Wall off internal stairwells with iron doors\u2014a solution that became standard, but not until the 20th century.<\/p>\n

Building owners and landlords took advantage of inadequate compliance and enforcement. A full decade after passage of the 1879 law, \u201cthe lives of fully 100,000 children are in danger,\u201d reported the Inquirer<\/em>. \u201cCity Councils have failed to obey the laws plainly lay down by the legislature of Pennsylvania. There are over 113,000 school children in Philadelphia distributed among 262 schoolhouses. Only 17 of these buildings are provided with fire escapes\u2026 \u00a0The remaining 245 schoolhouses, with over 100,000 pupils, are totally without any means of escape in case of fire.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Frankford<\/a>
Frankford Elevated – Site of Bent 16 – 208 North Front Street , April 2, 1919 (PhillyHistory.org)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

No surprise, really. Compliance failures continued for decades, as we know from the landmark disaster at the Triangle Shirtwaist fire of 1911, which killed 145 New Yorkers in less than half an hour.<\/p>\n

Did Philadelphia somehow manage to avoid such a pivotal and devastating event? Hardly. We recently recalled the Market Street fire of 1901<\/a>, where 22 died. And a full thirty years before the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, Philadelphia endured the tragic and scandalous Randolph Mill fire<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[Sources Include: Sara E. Wermiel, \u201cNo Exit: The Rise and Demise of the Outside Fire Escape,\u201d<\/a> Technology and Culture<\/em>, Vol. 44, No. 2 (Apr., 2003), pp. 258-284; \u201cThe Model of a New Fire-escape,\u201d The Philadelphia Inquirer,<\/em> March 26, 1849; \u201cTenement Traps,\u201d<\/a> The New York Times<\/em>, February 4, 1860; \u201cThe City\u2019s Safety, Annual Meeting of the Board of Fire Commissioners. Report of the Chief,\u201d The Philadelphia Inquirer<\/em>, February 11, 1880; \u201cSchools Not Protected,\u201d The Philadelphia Inquirer<\/em>, October 7, 1889.]<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How to safely exit a building on fire? The fire escape, of course. But what about before law required the familiar \u201ciron skeleton fire escape\u201d? In the greater part of the 19th century, when fire struck in the rising city, urbanites were at the mercy of fate. On more than one occasion, Philadelphia\u2019s garret sweatshops […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10435","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10435","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10435"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10435\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}