Porch collapse or balcony collapse is a phenomenon typically associated with older or poorly constructed multi-storey apartment buildings that have wooden porch extensions on the front or rear of the building. The collapses have a number of causes, including overloading due to excessive weight from overoccupancy (too many people). [1] Overoccupancy can result from guests filling a porch at a party, [2] from people seeking cooler breezes during a heat wave, or from people filling a porch while seeking shelter from the rain. [3] It may be from the weight of furniture/appliances, wading pools, or air conditioner compressors. After years of rain and snow, it may be from rotted wood, [4] soil subsidence under the porch foundation, rust of nails and fasteners, [5] and not being built to specifications required by modern-day building codes. Many older porches were built before codes required them to be able to support a legally mandated load of so many pounds per square foot or metre, and porches are often not as sturdily built as interior structures. The phenomenon is associated with older or poorly constructed multistorey apartment buildings with wooden porches. Architect Stanley Tigerman said that in New York City one finds steel fire escapes, but in Chicago, the distance to alleys behind multistorey brick buildings encouraged the construction of wooden multistorey porches. [6]
While not an everyday occurrence, collapses happen often enough in Chicago that city building inspectors make a point of checking porches when making inspections. [7] People have been killed and injured by collapses of wooden porches in other cities as well. [8] [9]
A Chicago porch collapse during a get-together in the Lincoln Park neighborhood in 2003 killed 13 people. The weight of approximately 70 people caused the recently renovated porch of the 1890s vintage building to fail. [10] [11] The disaster inspired a 2005 episode of the ER television show. [12] In June 2008, a third-story balcony collapsed in Ottawa, injuring six persons. [13]
A related hazard is the collapse of decks built as outdoor extensions of single-family homes. When decks became a popular feature, construction practice did not keep up with the new fashion, resulting in many decks that were simply nailed to the side of their houses. The inherently weak connections were prone to failure, resulting in collapse with injuries and occasional death. In recent years building codes have been re-written to require direct structural connection to the adjoining structure, as well as cross-bracing to withstand sway.
High-rise apartment buildings are typically constructed from reinforced concrete. Many buildings have been designed with the concrete slab extending through the exterior walls to form balconies. Since they are relatively thin and unprotected from the weather, they are vulnerable to corrosion of reinforcing and potential collapse. Many buildings constructed in the 1950s and 1960s are undergoing repair or removal of such balcony structures at considerable cost.
A tower block, high-rise, apartment tower, residential tower, apartment block, block of flats, or office tower is a tall building, as opposed to a low-rise building and is defined differently in terms of height depending on the jurisdiction. It is used as a residential, office building, or other functions including hotel, retail, or with multiple purposes combined. Residential high-rise buildings are also known in some varieties of English, such as British English, as tower blocks and may be referred to as MDUs, standing for multi-dwelling units. A very tall high-rise building is referred to as a skyscraper.
In architecture, a deck is a flat surface capable of supporting weight, similar to a floor, but typically constructed outdoors, often elevated from the ground, and usually connected to a building. The term is a generalization from the deck of a ship. A level architectural deck may be intended for use by people, e.g., what in the UK is usually called a decked patio. "Roof deck" refers to the flat layer of construction materials to which the weather impervious layers are attached to a form a roof. It is known as the "roof deck", and they may be either level or sloped.
A multistorey car park or parking garage, also called a multistory, parking building, parking structure, parkade, parking ramp, parking deck or indoor parking, is a building designed for car, motorcycle & bicycle parking and where there are a number of floors or levels on which parking takes place. It is essentially an indoor, stacked car park. The first known multistory facility was built in London in 1901, and the first underground parking was built in Barcelona in 1904. The term multistory is almost never used in the US, since parking structures are almost all multiple levels. Parking structures may be heated if they are enclosed.
A fire escape is a special kind of emergency exit, usually mounted to the outside of a building or occasionally inside but separate from the main areas of the building. It provides a method of escape in the event of a fire or other emergency that makes the stairwells inside a building inaccessible. Fire escapes are most often found on multiple-story residential buildings, such as apartment buildings. At one time, they were a very important aspect of fire safety for all new construction in urban areas; more recently, however, they have fallen out of common use. This is due to the improved building codes incorporating fire detectors, technologically advanced fire fighting equipment, which includes better communications and the reach of fire fighting ladder trucks, and more importantly fire sprinklers. The international building codes and other authoritative agencies have incorporated fire sprinklers into multi-story buildings below 15 stories and not just skyscrapers.
"The Show Must Go On" is the 245th episode of the NBC television series ER.
Framing, in construction, is the fitting together of pieces to give a structure support and shape. Framing materials are usually wood, engineered wood, or structural steel. The alternative to framed construction is generally called mass wall construction, where horizontal layers of stacked materials such as log building, masonry, rammed earth, adobe, etc. are used without framing.
Marina City is a mixed-use residential-commercial building complex in Chicago, Illinois, United States, North America, designed by architect Bertrand Goldberg. The multi-building complex opened between 1963 and 1967 and occupies almost an entire city block on State Street on the north bank of the Chicago River on the Near North Side, directly across from the Loop. Portions of the complex were designated a Chicago Landmark in 2016.
A three-decker or triple-decker, in the United States, is a three-story (triplex) apartment building. These buildings are typical of light-framed, wood construction, where each floor usually consists of a single apartment, and frequently, originally, extended families lived in two, or all three floors. Both stand-alone and semi-detached versions are common.
Multifamily residential is a classification of housing where multiple separate housing units for residential inhabitants are contained within one building or several buildings within one complex. Units can be next to each other, or stacked on top of each other. A common form is an apartment building. Many intentional communities incorporate multifamily residences, such as in cohousing projects. Sometimes units in a multifamily residential building are condominiums, where typically the units are owned individually rather than leased from a single apartment building owner.
Mack Park was the original home field of Detroit's Negro National League baseball franchise, the Detroit Stars. It was constructed in 1914 by Joe Roesink, sponsor of a local semi-professional team, a Dutchman of Jewish descent born in Grand Rapids who owned a chain of haberdasheries.
On June 29, 2003, the deadliest porch collapse in United States history occurred in Chicago.
The Emil Bach House is a Prairie style house in the Rogers Park neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois, United States that was designed by architect Frank Lloyd Wright. The house was built in 1915 for an admirer of Wright's work, Emil Bach, the co-owner of the Bach Brick Company. The house is representative of Wright's late Prairie style and is an expression of his creativity from a period just before his work shifted stylistic focus. The Bach House was declared a Chicago Landmark on September 28, 1977, and was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places on January 23, 1979.
Vi Daley was an alderman in the Chicago City Council, representing Chicago's 43rd ward. The 43rd ward includes much of the Lincoln Park and a small portions of the Near North Side Community areas. Daley was elected to three four-year terms, and chose not to seek reelection when her last term ended in 2011.
Progressive collapse is the process where a primary structural element fails, resulting in the failure of adjoining structural elements, which in turn causes further structural failure.
The Van Alen Building is a modern apartment and penthouse block on the seafront in Brighton, part of the English city of Brighton and Hove. It was named after William Van Alen, the architect of New York City's Chrysler Building and is designed as a 21st-century interpretation of the Art Deco and Streamline Moderne styles. It was completed in 2001.
The Emory Place Historic District is a historic district in Knoxville, Tennessee, United States, located just north of the city's downtown area. The district consists of several commercial, residential, religious, and public buildings that developed around a late nineteenth century train and trolley station. The district includes the Knoxville High School building, St. John's Lutheran Church, First Christian Church, and some of the few surviving rowhouses in Knoxville. The district was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1994.
Black Saturday was a 1903 disaster which left 12 spectators dead and injured 232 when a section of balcony collapsed during a baseball game between the Boston Braves and Philadelphia Phillies. It was the worst disaster in the history of American sports spectating.
Deck railing is a guard rail to prevent people falling from decks, stairs and balconies of buildings. Over time, many different styles of deck railing have been developed.
A porch is a room or gallery located in front of an entrance of a building. A porch is placed in front of the facade of a building it commands, and forms a low front. Alternatively, it may be a vestibule, or a projecting building that houses the entrance door of a building.
On June 16, 2015, shortly after midnight, five Irish J-1 visa students and one Irish-American died and seven others were injured after a balcony on which they were standing collapsed. The group was celebrating a 21st birthday party in Berkeley, California. The balcony was on the 5th floor of an apartment building at 2020 Kittredge Street in Berkeley, then called Library Gardens. The district attorney of Alameda County launched a criminal probe into the incident. In January 2022, one of the injured died from a stroke related to the injuries.