Fire Escape Plaques

“Any one placing any encumbrance on this balcony shall be fined ten dollars,” says the plaque on the fire escape outside of neighbor Sarah Jenny’s apartment. She sent in the photo and did a little searching to learn some details from Ephemeral New York.

The History Box goes back a little further, finding that though fire escape were around in New York City starting from about 1860, there weren’t any laws requiring them to be in good repair, or requiring them to be free from obstacles, until 1871. Fines were only put in place in 1885, making people subject to arrest, a $10 fine for each encumbrance, or up to 10 days in jail.

The most recent version of the law doesn’t require a plaque on fire escapes, but it is still illegal to put anything out there. If you’re caught, you could be, according to the 2010 New York Code, “guilty of a misdemeanor punishable, for a first offense, by a fine of not exceeding five hundred dollars or by imprisonment for a period of not exceeding thirty days, or by both such fine and imprisonment.”

Basically, it’s a bad idea to put stuff on a fire escape, both for safety and for potential fines. But if you’ve ever looked out at yours, have you seen one of these plaques? It would be interesting to know how many buildings in the area have them.