Tea at Trianon: Under the Shed Downtown

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Wednesday, February 9, 2022

Under the Shed Downtown

From City-Journal:

Though sidewalk sheds might give the impression of a city perpetually under construction, most have nothing to do with construction. They exist, rather, thanks to New York City’s unique and unusually costly requirements for inspecting and maintaining building façades, including buildings that pose little risk of façade disintegration. New York City’s Local Law 10, passed in 1980, requires that building owners conduct regular inspections of the façades of all buildings of six or more stories—with exceptions for those sufficiently far back from public walkways—every five years. A successor, Local Law 11 in 1998, made these regulations even more stringent by requiring inspections close-up rather than from a distance with binoculars.

These inspections can be expensive. One 2016 article in a magazine for housing co-op managers estimates that costs can range from “a few hundred thousand dollars to more than a million.” Some specific architectural features, such as balconies, can make buildings far more expensive to examine: inspections are usually conducted by dropping scaffolds from the roof (though alternatives such as boom trucks can work in some circumstances), and balcony railings cannot be inspected from scaffolds; inspectors must instead check every balcony individually. Sidewalk sheds owe their existence to a provision in the city’s Building Code that requires building owners to put up a sidewalk shed underneath. Setting the sheds up is a considerable expense: Stephen Valone and Peter Varsalona, two executives at the New York City–based repair and renovation firm Rand Engineering & Architecture, estimate installation costs of about $100 per linear foot, plus ongoing maintenance costs of about 5 percent of that sum per month. For buildings taller than 100 feet, moreover, sidewalk sheds must further extend 20 feet in front of neighboring buildings whose owners can demand “license fees” (which can be typically $1,200 to $1,500 per month). (Read more.)