Why Chicago Isn’t Covered in Fire Escapes Like New York

Watch the Anatomy of the Nokia 3310: https://nebula.tv/videos/realengineer... Get Nebula using my link for 50% off an annual subscription: https://go.nebula.tv/stewarthicks Why is New York covered in fire escapes, while Chicago — a city practically synonymous with burning down — has so few of them? It turns out these two cities learned very different lessons from fire. New York grew upward and inward, packing people into dense tenements where the nightmare was being trapped inside. Chicago grew outward, building quickly and cheaply with wood, where the bigger fear was fire racing from building to building. So New York often dealt with the problem by attaching escape routes to the outside. Chicago, under pressure from insurers and new building laws, pushed more of its fire safety into the construction of the building itself. This video looks at how density, alleys, wood framing, tenement reform, insurance companies, the Great Chicago Fire, the Iroquois Theater fire, and the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire all helped shape the buildings we still recognize today. _Special Thanks_ Evan Montgomery: Producer Daniela Osorio Sanudo: Graphics _Sources_ Christine Meisner Rosen, The Limits of Power: Great Fires and the Process of City Growth in America. Richard Plunz, A History of Housing in New York City. Elizabeth Mary André, Fire Escapes in Urban America: History and Preservation.” Sara E. Wermiel, The Fireproof Building: Technology and Public Safety in the Nineteenth-Century American City. Carl Smith, Urban Disorder and the Shape of Belief: The Great Chicago Fire, the Haymarket Bomb, and the Model Town of Pullman. Lawrence Veiller, The Tenement House Problem, edited with Robert W. De Forest. New York State Tenement House Commission, Report of the Tenement House Commission of 1900. NYC Department of Records and Information Services, “Building Escapes.” Good archival overview of New York fire escape regulation and inspection history. Village Preservation, “The Birth of the Tenement Fire Escape.” Useful for the 142 Elm Street fire and early fire escape history. Encyclopedia of Chicago, “Fire Limits.” Useful for Chicago’s post-fire regulatory geography and the logic of limiting wood construction. Chicago Public Library, “Fire Limits: Technology That Changed Chicago.” Helpful for connecting fire limits to Chicago’s built form. National Weather Service, “The Great Midwest Wildfires of 1871.” Useful for Great Chicago Fire figures and regional fire context. NYC Fire Code, Chapter 10 / Section 1027, Means of Egress. Useful for current fire escape access rules, including restrictions on air conditioners in fire escape windows. _Membership_ Join this channel to get access to perks:    / @stewarthicks   _About the Channel_ Architecture with Stewart is a YouTube journey exploring architecture’s deep and enduring stories in all their bewildering glory. Weekly videos and occasional live events breakdown a wide range of topics related to the built environment in order to increase their general understanding and advocate their importance in shaping the world we inhabit. _About Me_ Stewart Hicks is an architectural design educator that leads studios and lecture courses as an Associate Professor in the School of Architecture at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He also serves as an Associate Dean in the College of Architecture, Design, and the Arts and is the co-founder of the practice Design With Company. His work has earned awards such as the Architecture Record Design Vanguard Award or the Young Architect’s Forum Award and has been featured in exhibitions such as the Chicago Architecture Biennial and Design Miami, as well as at the V&A Museum and Tate Modern in London. His writings can be found in the co-authored book Misguided Tactics for Propriety Calibration, published with the Graham Foundation, as well as essays in MONU magazine, the AIA Journal Manifest, Log, bracket, and the guest-edited issue of MAS Context on the topic of character architecture. _Contact_ FOLLOW me on instagram: @stewart_hicks & @designwithco Design With Company: https://designwith.co University of Illinois at Chicago School of Architecture: https://arch.uic.edu/ _Attributions_ Stock video and imagery provided by Getty Images, Storyblocks, and Shutterstock. Music provided by Epidemic Sound and includes music from Chromatic by Tom Fox    / @chromaticbytomfox  " #architecture #urbandesign