I recently had the pleasure of visiting Chicago on business. Part of the visit involved taking the red- and yellow-line trains up to Skokie.
Staring out the window of the yellow line, I noticed a lot of two, three and four story brick or cinder-block apartment buildings, which all shared a common feature: they had what appeared to be combination decks and fire-escapes, all made out of wood!. If you can’t imagine what I’m talking about, think of a wooden deck like you might find on the back of a house, except stacked on top of each other, with wooden staircases connecting them.
There were hundreds and hundreds of buildings with this odd feature. Around here, larger apartment buildings may have balconies or terraces, but never the kind of thing I saw there. And any external staircases would almost always be metal fire-escapes, not the wooden deck type structures I saw. (One particularly cool example had a spiral staircase between the levels.)
Unfortunately my camera was packed away so I didn’t get any pics. So what’s the deal with those things? Seems like a good way to burn down a city…
Dude! Those are the legendary Three-Flat Porches of Chicago, they’re, like, totally famous. Seriously.
I couldn’t find an article on them on Google offhand, but they’ve been profiled in places like the Chicago Tribune Sunday magazine over the years. I did find this Wiki article on the local hazard of porch collapses…
And this reminder from just last week, about the importance of inspecting your porch. He’s not talking about the ordinary front porch on yer bungalow, he’s talking about that three-story deck you use every day to get into your kitchen.
My grandparents lived in an apartment building in Forest Park in the 1960s that had those, and they’re totally awesome. A three-story deck, yeah. All made out of wood.
ETA: They don’t burn down; they fall down.
Is the thing.
Wow, I had no idea they were unique! Yeah, we’ve got 'em. Got lots of 'em, they’re pretty much standard on 2 and 3 (and occasionally 4) story apartment buildings. The one at my last place (which was in Evanston, which is really Chicago Lite) was a death trap - rickety and wobbly boards and way too tight a twisty ascent. Most of the steps were triangular, so you basically had to hug the outside to find a place wide enough for your foot. My size 13.5 shoe wearing son had to walk up and down it with his feet twisted sideways.
My new place has a much nicer one, built by my carpenter-landlord. Each porch is large enough for a table and one or two chairs, and the stair portions are mostly protected from the elements, which makes walking up during the winter time easier. I just sweep off what snow makes it through. The only drawback is that the landlord is paranoid about rot, so we’re not allowed to have any real plants on the porches - they all have to be fake, which looks, well, fake.
Next door there’s an identical building, with a porch/stairs set up that’s much the same, only entirely enclosed. Nice for storage, but no view or breeze at all. Not really the kind of place you want to hang out much.