The Historic
Dimension Series
A student publication series by the UNCG Department of Interior Architecture
The Ins and Outs of Fire Escapes:
Fire Safety Construction in Urban America
By Katie Bates Spring 2011
One might expect the his-tory
of architectural fire
safety practices in America
to be rooted in the protection and sanctity
of human life. In reality, however, the story
of nineteenth-century American fire safety
construction is a tale of reaction, trial and
error, material goods, and cost saving mea-sures.
The concept of construction focused
primarily on saving human lives did not
gain popularity until the early twentieth
century. At the center of these changing
ideals and amidst decades of technological
and sociological change is the fire escape.
The evolution of the fire escape has been
dictated by a complex combination of social
expectations, historical context, and tech-nical
knowledge. Exploring the evolution
of the construction and application of fire
escapes from the late 19th century through
present day allows us to understand archi-tectural
fire safety practices as a product of
their social and historical context.
The Rise of Fire Safety Construction
Until the mid nineteenth century, fire safety
construction was non-existent. As a result,
fires and conflagration were common and
often devastating. However, during the
1800s large waves of immigrants poured
into American cities, looking for places to
live and work. These immigrants had little
money and few resources. Consequently,
the mid 1800s saw the rise of tenement
housing in urban areas, most prevalently
in New York City. Tenement houses were
densely populated, minimally maintained
complexes, which held hundreds and even
thousands of residents in extremely small
quarters. In the early years of their devel-opment,
tenement houses were converted
buildings, often old commercial spaces.
However, as leasing to tenants became a
lucrative process, buildings were construct-ed
for that purpose. This pushed buildings
taller, and packed them fuller, than ever
before. Not only did immigrants live in tene-ment
housing, many of them also used their
homes as shops. It did not take long for the
inherent fire dangers of these buildings to
come to light. Residents erected homemade
partitions to increase privacy and function-ality
within their tight quarters, most often
out of insubstantial, combustible material.
Stairways within the buildings were mini-mal,
not accounting for the overcrowded
rooms. In addition, they were steep, dark,
and difficult to navigate. Hallways posed
a similar challenge. Finally, candles and
wooden stoves literally brought fire into the
tenement homes on a daily basis.
As a result of these dangerous conditions,
countless devastating fires swept through
New York City’s tenement districts. In
February 1860, one fire had a particularly
profound impact on the city. A fire broke
out in a tall tenement building, trapping
people on floors beyond the reach of tra-ditional
firefighter’s ladders; ten women
and children died in the blaze. Following
this incident, New York City passed its first
egress law in 1860. This law required tene-ment
buildings to have either one protected
exterior stairway or two building exits. The
bill also implemented fines for violating the
law. It also required “fireproof material,”
meaning something other than wood, which
The nine-teenth
and
twentieth
centuries
experienced
great strides
in fire safety
construction
as a result of
the great di-sasters
that
plagued an
industrializing
nation.
UNCG The Historic Dimension Series: 2
Figure 3: A sketch of the “rope and pulley” fire escape
system
led to the prevalent use of iron. Although iron was not
flammable, it required maintenance, something most
tenement fire escapes rarely received. As a result, rust
and un-cleared snow and ice compromised the efficacy
of the fire escape. Additionally, despite regulations to
the contrary, many people used their fire escapes for
storage. Although illegal, fire escapes provided valuable
square footage, and tenants often used them for every-thing
from extra storage space to somewhere to hang the
laundry.
Not only were iron balcony fire escapes inadequate, but
two years later the law was changed to further relax fire
safety regulations, requiring only “a practical fire-proof
fire escape.” This meant extreme variability and lenience
in exterior fire escapes. The fixed iron balcony and stairs
that come to mind today were costly, and many land-lords
rejected them based on appearance alone. Instead,
building owners favored fire escapes that were discreet,
removable, and inexpensive. The late nineteenth century
saw extreme innovation in fire escape construction, from
the insufficient, a rope-and-pulley systems in which
people lowered themselves to the ground one-by-one,
to the bizarre, inflatable chutes that traveled from a
low-level window to the ground, on which people could
slide to safety, to the simply inadequate, such as flimsy
chain ladders.
Not surprisingly, the 1860 law proved inadequate for
reducing fire danger. Although other cities adopted
similar regulations, fires continued to devastate urban
areas. The Great Chicago Fire of 1871 drew attention the
high risk of urban areas and to the inadequate solu-tions
offered by contemporary fire escapes. The Great
Chicago Fire began on October 8, 1871, and burned for
three days. During these three days, 300 people died,
100,000 people lost their homes, and 18,000 buildings
were destroyed. Among the main culprits of the confla-gration
were a drought, unfavorable winds, and a city
constructed almost entirely from wood. In 1871 New
York City revised its law to require “a proper fire-escape
or means of escape in case of fire.” Boston, Philadelphia,
and other large cities followed suit, marking the begin-ning
of the fire escape’s prevalent application on build-ings.
These laws extended the scope of the regulations
to include buildings besides tenements, establishing fire
safety construction methodes for factories, hotels, board-ing
houses, and office buildings.
Consequently, the following decades saw regular ap-plication
of various types of exterior iron balcony fire
escapes. One popular style was vertical ladders placed
between balconies. Another more effective approach
was the smoke-proof tower. These towers were fully
enclosed stairways, which offered increased strength
and protection compared with the iron balcony escapes.
Although fire escapes became more prevalent, they were
not universally heralded. The early twentieth century
saw a constant tug-of-war between landlords, who
wanted to maximize profits, and city governments and
Progressive activists, who wanted to protect their cities
and the inhabitants. Although fire escapes remained the
most popular secondary exit through the early twentieth
century, their effectiveness was unreliable. Access to
fire escapes was often blocked, construction was flimsy
and materials subject to deterioration, and many of the
ladders—which fell just high enough off the ground to
prevent intruders from using them as a means of entry—
failed to deliver residents all the way to safety.
The Rise of the “Fireproof” Building
Another approach during this time was the “fireproof
Figure 2: Laundry hangs from fire escapes in a New
York City tenement
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Figure 4: The rubble left in the wake of the Boston Fire in
1872; brick facades with wood framing
Figure 5: The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory after the fire on
March 25, 1911 building.” The idea was that if the buildings were con-structed
out of fireproof materials, there would be no
need for fire escapes, as the fire could not expand to a
dangerous level. Consequently, construction materials
shifted from wood to noncombustible materials. “Fire-proofing”
a building through construction meant build-ing
the floors, posts, interior walls, and roof frames out
of materials other than wood. Builders used brick walls,
iron fixtures, and stone slab floors. Iron and steel beams
were introduced, as was hollow tile and concrete. These
materials were combined to create a building imperme-able
to fire.
Unfortunately, the theory was more effective than the
practice. Fireproof construction failed as an effective an-swer
to fire safety issues for a number of reasons. Firstly,
noncombustible materials came at a high cost; it was
considerably less expensive to use wood and standard
construction methods. Although some building owners
took it upon themselves to spend the extra money to en-sure
the safety of their building and its residents, many
did not. In addition, although fires were common by
present-day standards, they happened infrequently and
randomly enough that many building owners simply
believed it could not happen to them, thereby elimi-nating
the need to spend great amounts of money to
protect from damage. Another line of thinking involved
insurance. As fire insurance became available, building
owners fear of fire was assuaged. Their fire concerns
were not about the threat to human life, but the threat
to their building. If insurance money would provide the
means to recoup their losses, fire safety measures were
unnecessary. Finally, one of the largest problems with
the “fireproof” building is that it was not fireproof at
all. Many of the masonry walls also had wood in them,
wood frames, wood dormers, etc. Therefore, if the build-ing
did catch fire, it would burn to the ground, leaving
only a pile of bricks.
Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire & Its Aftermath
The gravity of the shortcomings of fireproof buildings
and fire escapes was not fully realized until the Triangle
Shirtwaist Company fire of 1911. This fire occurred in
a textile factory in New York City. The building was
“fireproof,” made of iron, steel, and tile, but it was not
enough to contain the fire that broke out on March 25.
The fire spread to the eighth, ninth, and tenth floors,
where the factory was located, and which was too high
for firefighters’ ladders to reach. Elevators failed, exit
doors were locked, and the hose system that was in
place on each floor was either inoperative, or the em-ployees
had never been trained to use it. The fire escapes
quickly became unusable when flames coming out the
windows caused the balconies to collapse. Although
the exterior of the building suffered relatively minimal
damage, 141 workers, mostly women, died in the fire.
This disaster emphasized the need for fire escapes and
construction methods that prioritized not the infrastruc-ture,
but the protection of human life.
The Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire led to major
changes over the course of the twentieth century. One of
the leading voices in the call for change was the National
Fire Protection Association (NFPA). The NFPA began as
a group of fire insurance inspectors seeking to develop
more uniform standards for the installation of automatic
sprinklers. However, by the early twentieth century,
the NFPA had expanded its scope, and wanted more
uniform standards for any and all fire protection and
prevention practices. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory
Fire provided the perfect support for their argument.
Following the fire, they suggested stair towers instead
of outside fire escapes, wire glass in windows adjacent
to fire escapes, fire towers in tall buildings, sprinklers,
exterior stairs with the same construction as interior
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stairs, and accessibility to fire escapes via doors rather
than windows.
NFPA’s recommendations were not met with immedi-ate
success, and fire escapes did not disappear imme-diately
after the Shirtwaist fire. Rather, the regulations
and construction of fire escapes changed. Some of the
major changes to fire escape construction were to the
balconies and stairs. Firstly, regulations mandated a
protected zone around the balcony of every fire escape.
This meant that any windows surrounding the balcony
platform had to be sealed. The idea behind this measure
was eliminating the type of problem that occurred in the
Shirtwaist fire, in which flames leapt out of the windows
and heated up the balconies to a destructive tempera-ture.
In addition, the regulations encouraged straight
and switchback stairs instead of spiral staircases for the
escapes. This was significant because spiral staircases
require angled treads on the individual stairs. These are
more complex and harder to navigate, increasing the
potential for accidents. In addition, mandates required
that the outside stairs be as wide and as sturdy as any
interior stairs. A final structural mandate was that fire
escapes could not be used on buildings over six stories
high.
In addition to structural changes, a number of code
and regulation changes altered the way fire escapes fit
into larger fire safety measures. Occupancy standards
represented a major shift in the way construction efforts
were conducted. The number of safe fire escape options
offered by the building regulated the number of people
allowed in the building at any one time. For fire escapes,
in particular, there were a specific number of people per
floor who could use a single balcony, limiting and regu-lating
building occupancy by floor.
Fire Safety Construction in Mid-to-Late 20th C.
As the limitations of fire escapes were recognized, in
terms of number of people they could accommodate in
case of necessity and the structural restrictions, other
methods of fire escape and protection became more
prominent pieces of fire safety construction. The fire
escapes of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
gave way to the fire towers and fire stairs that we see in
modern buildings. Regulations for these stairs included
provisions for stair widths, number of staircases within
the building, accessibility (including door types and
directions of access), and width of corridors. Initially,
building owners had been reluctant to include these be-cause
they took up valuable space that could be turning
a profit. However, the Shirtwaist fire had been the push
the government needed to pass and enforce regulations
that required their construction, and they have become a
prevalent and effective solution.
Today’s stairways are recognizable products of the re-strictions
developed in the early twentieth century. They
are required to be structurally sound, and easily naviga-ble
by however many people safely occupy the building
according to fire code. Some additional regulations have
been imposed to increase safety. For example, fire safe
stairwells must be clearly identified through signage
throughout the building. In addition, the stairwells must
be fully enclosed by self-closing doors that open towards
the stairs. One more recent change that has not been
fully realized in all buildings is differentiating general
public use stairways and those used by firefighters in
case of a fire. This is significant because firefighter use of
stairways introduces smoke into the stairwell, compro-mising
its safety.
In addition to interior stairwells, other changes have im-pacted
the slow depreciation of need for exterior fire es-
Figure 7: A decorative spiral fire escape in New York City
Figure 6: A standard iron balcony fire escape, with a
compromised pull-down ladder
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capes. Sprinklers are one significant innovation that has
greatly increased the ability to contain a building fire.
The first automatic sprinkler systems began to appear
in the early 1880s. By the late 1890s, due in large part
to insurance incentives, automatic sprinklers could be
found in many industrial buildings. Nonetheless, they
were rarely found in residential buildings. It wasn’t until
after the Shirtwaist fire that sprinklers were installed in
residential buildings.
Sprinklers systems today are still most common in large
occupancy buildings rather than residential buildings.
In addition, the two serve different purposes. For those
residential buildings that have sprinkler systems, their
primary function is to allow for additional escape time.
In industrial buildings, the primary function of the
sprinkler system is to actually control the fire. Modern
sprinkler systems are extremely effective in protecting
human life, and barring human error they have an in-credible
success rate. The most common type of sprin-kler
system is the wet pipe sprinkler. In this system,
pipes are connected to a generous water supply, and
distribute water through the structure through sprinkler
heads, which are self-contained detection and applica-tion
devices. Water distribution to the sprinkler piping is
controlled through valves. Other sprinkler systems are:
dry pipe sprinkler system, pre-action sprinkler, and the
deluge system.
Another element of fire safety that has changed consid-erably
in the latter half of the twentieth century is ven-tilation.
Strategically placed vents in buildings (rooms
and stairwells) allow the firefighters to better control the
flow of the fire. These vents can be opened and closed
to balance the drafts created by the opening and closing
of doors by people escaping the building and firefight-ers
entering the building. In high-rise buildings, codes
often require a certain percentage of unsealed, openable
windows, or windows made of tempered glass to enable
manual ventilation.
Conclusion
The United States made great strides in fire safety con-struction
from the beginning of the nineteenth century
to the middle of the twentieth. Fire escapes were intro-duced
and then slowly phased out as new understand-ings
of the most efficient and effective ways to fight fires
came to light, and as the preservation of human life be-came
the number one concern in fire safety construction.
The second half of the twentieth century introduced new
technologies and greater legal control over fire safety
practices.
However, measuring the efficacy of fire safety construc-tion
evolution is not as simple as it might seem. One
of the greatest contributors to fewer fire deaths in the
present day is fewer fires in large commercial buildings
and urban areas. In the unfortunate case of large-scale
fires, shortcomings are repeatedly exposed. The events
of September 11, for example, emphasized structural
and compositional flaws in the skyscrapers’ fire safety
architecture; the material used on the stairways was too
weak. A 2007 fire in a big-box furniture store in South
Carolina killed nine firefighters; it was later discovered
that the building did not have any automatic sprinklers.
The strides made in the twentieth century demonstrate
a greater understanding of fires and fireproofing, but
the disasters of the twentieth and twenty-first century
show that there is still a ways to go. A combination of
increased understanding of fire behavior, and greater
compliance with regulations will make our buildings
truly safe.
Figure 9: Present-day signage indicating a fire-safe
stairwell
Figure 8: A present-day fire stairwell with emergency
water supply pipe
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Bibliography
Aldrich, Mark. Safety First: Technology, Labor, and Busi-ness
in the Building of American Work Safety, 1870- 1939.
Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1997.
André, Elizabeth Mary. “Fire Escapes in Urban America:
History and Preservation.” MS thesis, University of
Vermont, 2006. http://www.uvm.edu/histpres/HPJ/
AndreThesis.pdf
Kleane, Bernard J. and Sanders, Russell E. Structural Fire-fighting:
Strategy and Tactics. Jones and Bartlett Publish-ers,
2007.
Lower East Side Tenement Museum. “Tenement Mu-seum.”
2009. http://www.tenement.org/.
Wermiel, Sara E. The Fireproof Building: Technology and
Public Safety in the Nineteenth-Century American City. Bal-timore:
John Hopkins University Press, 2000.
Wermiel, Sara E. “The Rise and Demise of the Outside
Fire Escape.” Technology and Culture 44, no. 2 (2003): 258-
284.
The Historic Dimension Series is a collection of briefs prepared
by UNCG students under the direction of Professor Jo Ramsay
Leimenstoll. For information on other topics in the series please
visit the website at go.uncg.edu/hds
Figure 11: Vertical iron balcony fire escapes in New York
City
Figure 10: Firefighters fight the 2007 big-box furniture
store fire in 2007
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