What had stood for so long took just a few days to deconstruct. I had to pull chewing gum from my pants after one iron pipe encounter. Many were the elbow bruises, ripped jackets, and turned ankles I endured while hugging the shed’s metal posts and jutting joints to evade bodily contact with others. The foot traffic running through the scaffolding created an awful jam, particularly while trying to get an impatient dog to the park.
Besides being a haven for pigeons and raccoons, it completely boxed in a busy intersection at which a subway station and crosstown bus stop converge, along with a stoplight and a bagel-pastry cart popular among morning commuters. This wraparound sidewalk shed, which a worker confirmed had been in place for more than 15 years and straddled an entire corner of Central Park West and 96th Street, was especially obstructionist. The scaffolding overhanging two buildings down the street was dismantled, revealing the façades of an elegant apartment house and adjacent church for the first time in, well, a long time. You can check it out here.A thing of beauty emerged on my Upper West Side block recently, something New Yorkers are seeing more often these days. They are calling upon artists and non-profit organizations to submit proposals for artwork that will enliven construction fences and sidewalk sheds.Īlso, the DOB recently released an interactive map that tracks the city’s 270 miles of subway sheds, if you’re interested in the topic and want to dig a bit deeper. The city has launched a two-year pilot that hopes to make these structures a bit easier on the eyes. The city’s oldest sidewalk shed can be found just a few blocks away at Lenox Avenue and West 115th Street, where it has been in place since 1990-a whopping 28 years. Ultimately, it cost the owner of 260 Lenox Avenue, the property where the sidewalk shed had been in place since 2004, less than $60,000 to carry out facade repairs, but has racked up roughly $700,000 in DOB fines and violations related to the project, says Crain’s. Even the DOB headquarters at 280 Broadway in Manhattan has had a sidewalk shed around it since 2008.
In 2016, the Department of Buildings (DOB) found that the city was home to nearly 2,000 “dormant sheds” where repair work wasn’t being carried out on building facades that posed safety hazards. Kallos argued that some property owners opt to keep the sheds in place for extended periods of time to put off making costly facade repairs. It was scaffolding like these that prompted City Councilman Ben Kallos to introduce a bill last November that aimed to require scaffolding to be taken down within six months of it having gone up. The sidewalk shed was one of nearly 8,000 around the city and was one of the city’s oldest. According to them, trash would often accumulate on the shed’s rood and it was a hot spot for loitering. After 14 years, a sidewalk shed in Harlem has finally been removed.Īccording to Crain’s, the structure, located on the corner of Lenox Avenue and West 123rd Street, was removed on October 5, to the delight of residents who were tired of the eyesore.
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