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

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.