Posted on 01/12/2022 5:02:08 AM PST by MtnClimber
The big front page story in the New York newspapers the past couple of days has been the fire on Sunday in an apartment building in The Bronx that has killed some 19 people so far — with as many as 30 more in the hospital with life-threatening injuries. This loss of life in a fire is the greatest in New York since a 1990 fire at a nightclub in The Bronx (which killed more than 80).
So what kind of apartment building was this? Is there anything we should know about it? Look up the coverage in the New York Times, and you will learn, unhelpfully, that the building in question was “a 19-story Bronx apartment building” at 333 East 181st St., that went by the name of “Twin Parks North West.” Nothing about how this building came to be built, or by whom. But if you know anything about The Bronx, you will realize that, outside of the small Riverdale district, there are almost no apartment buildings there that are as tall as 19 stories other than those built with extensive government subsidies.
Do a little research, and you quickly learn that this is a heavily-subsidized building, built according to the socialist model, for low income people. It was erected in 1973 (and thus is 48 years old), with funding provided by New York’s Urban Development Corporation (since re-named Empire State Development Corporation). As is inevitable in the socialist model, the building has been inadequately maintained. Nobody has had any incentive to keep it nice, let alone safe. Now, everything had become ripe for disaster.
Looking for some in depth background on the building, I find a lengthy piece from 2013 in something called Urban Omnibus, which is a publication of the Architecture League of New York. The piece has the title “Twin Parks Northwest 40 Years On,” and its focus is to consider whether, forty years after it was built, this particular project can or cannot be considered a “success” in the world of publicly-subsidized low-income housing. The authors, as well as the many people quoted, all operate in the world of public housing architecture, and their mindset can fairly be described as “we can finally make socialism work if only we can tweak the details to get the architecture right.”
The background is that 1973 was at the tail end of the era of construction of massive low-income housing “projects” in New York. As the early projects (dating from the 1940s) had already begun to fail, genius planners started blaming the failure on the grim model of dozens of identical “towers in a park” concentrating poverty in one small area. So Twin Parks would try a new approach, known as “scattered-site,” to integrate the project residents into the larger community:
Twin Parks [is] a scattered-site urban renewal project in the central Bronx creating over 2,000 units of housing in mid- to high-rise buildings integrated into the existing neighborhood fabric and its varied topography. . . . Designed by six different architects on 12 distinct sites, it marked a shift away from the modern “tower-in-the-park” planning ideal to a “scattered-site” and “contextual” approach. Twin Parks is one of the seemingly few examples in late-20th century U.S. housing where architectural quality was seen as integral to the quantitative socio-political goals of housing.
Two of the twelve Twin Parks sites were considered particularly innovative for their “sensitively framed . . . public open space.” One of these two was 333 East 181st St. Here is a description of a public space that it shared with its next-door neighbor, also a part of the complex:
From 184th Street, a single stair leads down to the center of the courtyard. Here, play and seating areas in front of the community and laundry rooms were organized around gradual concrete steps filled with grass, negotiating the terrain. Like the rug in a living room, the intricate pattern of pavers set among green created a focal point for the space, a visual attraction for residents, childcare users, and passers-by alike.
Cool. Here are a couple of pictures of 333 East 181st St., taken at or about the time of completion in 1973, from the Urban Omnibus piece:
Looks pretty ominous to me, but what do I know?
So how had it fared after 40 years? Here are a few notes from the Urban Omnibus piece. Keep in mind as you read this that the authors of the piece are desperate to find reasons to declare this particular project a success. Relating to that cool courtyard just described:
40 years after its completion, in the courtyard, most of the trees are still standing. However, their roots are now cracking a continuous field of concrete that has been poured over the original grid of grass and pavers. While the play equipment has been updated, the glass façade of the community room has been replaced by concrete block, preventing the visual connection between the interior and exterior. . . . The conversation suggested that current management either does not consider these original amenities something residents with lower than average incomes could appreciate, or that that the upkeep of these amenities is not a cost-benefit priority. Filling in windows and covering grass, while explained as cost-saving measures or responses to security and vandalism concerns, reveal a particular attitude about exterior spaces and common rooms.
Did the residents somehow not appreciate these wonderful open spaces?
The residents’ attitudes toward the open space seem split. Lo-Yi Chan recalls that from the beginning people threw debris out of their windows, and it even had a name: “air mail.” According to Webster, this is why all but one of the private patios off of the courtyard-level apartments go unused. Falling objects are also blamed for the tower’s empty back patio.
And now about the financial success of the project?
A month after our visit . . . New York State announced $163 million of funding to make necessary physical improvements to three Twin Parks complexes, including the courtyard and tower at Twin Parks Northwest, and preserve their affordability for another 40 years.
Even then the taxpayers were being forced to step in to keep the project from further deterioration. But it seems to have been an inadequate effort. Fast forward another eight and a half years to the present, you might think that $163 million for just three of the twelve Twin Parks complexes would get them into tip-top condition. But then read the news stories to find out why a small apartment fire turned into a mass-death event, and you find this:
-First, the fire apparently got started from a malfunctioning space heater. Why was the resident using an electric space heater when the apartment should be adequately heated by the building’s system? From the Commercial Observer, January 10: “A . . . look at complaints made to the New York City Housing Preservation and Development show that tenants at 333 East 181st Street said they experienced heating [and] radiator . . . issues, while conditions ranging from infestations and other maintenance issues were commonplace in 2021.”
-Next, once the fire started, it was supposed to get contained to the apartment of origin by an apartment door that would automatically close, and if that failed it would be contained to the floor of origin by a stairway door that would automatically close. Oh, nobody bothered to maintain those. From the New York Post, January 10: “City inspectors previously repeatedly cited the Bronx high-rise where 17 people died in a fire for failing to maintain its self-closing apartment doors — a key defense against rapidly spreading blazes. Fire Commissioner Dan Nigro singled out malfunctioning self-closing doors during a Monday press conference as a key reason smoke from the flames quickly engulfed much of the 19-story tower in the Twin Parks Northwest complex Sunday.”
-And then, didn’t fire and smoke alarms go off promptly, alerting building residents to evacuate quickly before the situation became dangerous? From the New York Times, January 9: “Ms. Campbell, who lives on the third floor, said that the fire alarms in the building go off five or six times a day. When they do, she said, ‘I roll my eyes.’”
This is life in a subsidized low-income housing project. The residents, in this socialist model, are completely passive, bearing no responsibility for any maintenance issues, including basic fire safety. It’s “to each according to his needs.” So the maintenance issues are all left to a faceless bureaucracy, which somehow can quickly blow through $163 million, without managing to get to basic fire safety. Now they’ll probably get another few hundred mil to rebuild the place.
It most definitely is the attitude of “live for today for tomorrow we may die.”
I have always felt there was a direct relationship with the phenomenon known as “the tragedy of the commons” which describes how, when nobody has responsibility for a common thing that is used by many people (such as a town common was used in the past for everyone to graze their animals on) that “thing” will invariably be destroyed because nobody values it until it is destroyed.
If it were their own property being grazed, people would never let the grass be taken down to bare earth. But when it is property owned by nobody, people would allow their animals to do just that.
And you see the same thing in tenements, where people don’t have ownership outside of their own quarters, and even then.
Many of such multigenerational welfare families feel trapped and abused. Their families have been paid for generations now not to include a married father in their home. Eventually loyalty to family engenders a continuing adherence to that lifestyle rather than actions that could be seen as a negative judgment on those who raised them. The same goes for fathers who are away in prison. Much has been documented on the negative effects on sons, but it is devastating for daughters as well.
Also, it is dangerous to try to accumulate capital or make enough to go off the dole: free healthcare, housing, food, and other subsidies are lost and it can be a challenge to get back on them honestly without losing more than they started with.
Six story buildings. Taller buildings have elevators and “fire stairs” that are separated from hallways by masonry walls and at least one fire door.
Fire codes, especially for multiple dwelling buildings over six stories, are mountainous.
I do not in any way disagree with that dynamic you have described.
In a society ruled by laws, private property is possible and obtainable. If you were a farmer living in an era where there was lawlessness and no overall power structure with laws to protect you, you were forced to stay on your land to constantly watch over your property lest it be destroyed or stolen.
In a land ruled by laws that are enforced, a farmer can be more productive because they can leave their property as needed, and don’t have to expend the time, energy, or personnel to be on guard and protect it.
In our big cities ruled by Leftist Democrats (and now, reaching into the suburbs) if you don’t expend the time, energy, or personnel to guard your property be it your house, your car, your food, or even your life, it will be lost with no recourse.
And that is indeed what many of those people have been reduced to.
I can see by your last paragraph in your post, you understand that as well as I do.
And I didn’t mean to be disagreeing with your post at all either.
I just meant to add it as further context, since many rural, suburban, and red-state Freepers don’t seem to understand the underlying dynamics.
The destruction of the New York City State is good for America
One of the issues in fires today is the amount of plastic materials in homes and apartments. That means rooms become fully engulfed in flames much, much faster.
In the past firefighter heart attacks were blamed on medical conditions. Now we know the hydrogen cyanide from burning plastic cause a collapse that’s been misinterpreted as a heart attack.
In case of a fire in a home furnished with modern materials your only chance of survival even if no smoke is visible is an immediate exit. The invisible gases will kill you before smoke is apparent.
The video of the UL test at the link shows the danger.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDNPhq5ggoE
My 1st thought was “How do you get to build a high-rise apartment building in NYC without sprinklers?” Not to say there weren’t, but I haven’t seen a single mention of them.
Absolutely. I got that.
And the other Freeper who I thought was accusing me of being racist wasn’t doing that...he was just introducing things he saw as facts about the outdated construction of the building, etc. which made it susceptible to fires like this, and I jumped on him needlessly.
I could be wrong, but sure looks like one. My dad had an obscure car, the 1972 Plymouth Cricket which was based on that car, and my whole family learned to drive it before it died a hard death of over-use!
Fire escapes were banned in new building construction in the late 60's.
It’s not racial, as your tragedy of the commons reference suggests: it is human nature.
We have the well-documented story of our first Thanksgiving as our founding example of that.
2017, West London
Grenfell Tower
Council housing, i.e. public housing
72 dead
I have in-laws that live in the Riverdale section of the Bronx. In around 1990, my BILs mother had a two BR apartment in a mid-rise, which was rent controlled and she had it for many years the rent was at that time $145.00/month. At that time my wife and me were paying a mortgage in south jersey (Ocean County) we had a 3 BR ranch very simple home our mortgage was 6 times that amount at $900.00/month.
My BIL separated from his wife he got a 6th floor 1 BR apartment in Riverdale, very small his rent was about $700/month. He passed away in this apartment, we visited him the day of his passing and he had that place so full of stuff that it was difficult to get him out of it. I would imagine that many apartments are like this, filled to the rafters with stuff.
The press is reporting that this high rise apartment fire was caused by a space heater malfunction. My guess is in the details there was a lot of debris near or in contact with the heater. The thing about the doors not closing automatically, that might be true but if your door doesn’t close automatically do you simply leave it open?
I have always been able to appreciate that parallel to the First Thanksgiving. Anyone who ponders human nature will understand that lesson!
I heaard the new cause was that a 5 yo with a lighter lit a Christmas tree on fire.
I think that was another recent fire that killed 10 or 11?
You could be right, but I thought it was a Toyota Corolla.
On the basis of the rims alone, I have to defer!
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