#HTE

Today’s Urban Design Observation: Improvised Truncated Anti-Drunk, Anti-Homeless Front Door

Sometimes in New York City you’ll see apartment building hacks. In this case, at a building in Little Italy, a dedicated entrance has been added to a basement apartment. This was clearly not part of the original architecture.

Here’s a problem that’s well-known, at least locally: If you have stairs descending from the sidewalk, it becomes the go-to spot for urine, vomit and/or feces, deposited by patrons leaving nearby bars and/or the homeless. These types of spaces are also attractive to the homeless as sleeping spaces in inclement weather. (I have a story about that that’s not fit to print here, remind me to tell it to you sometime at the bar.) So here a door has been added to block access.

The door swings outwards, and is necessarily truncated so that it can clear the sidewalk. That leaves this odd gap at the bottom, perfect for rat access.

The door could go all the way down to the floor if it was hung to swing inwards, but:

A) That would be awkward for people exiting the building–you’d have to go up the steps, grab the knob, and go back down the steps to open the door, and

B) It’s impossible for the door to swing inwards here. If you look you can see that it would hit the slanted ceiling inside.

So we have this very unattractive, improvised solution. But it’s better than stepping in something.

http://www.core77.com/posts/72263/Todays-Urban-Design-Observation-Improvised-Truncated-Anti-Drunk-Anti-Homeless-Front-Door