Per Michael:
"The main piece narrowly missed a young woman on the sidewalk. Considering the number of people on the sidewalk in front of and around the Blind Barber Bar, it is very fortunate that no one was injured. The police were on the scene and quickly taped off the area. The fire department responded, followed shortly by the Building Dept.
The area is now cordoned off and under police surveillance until the landlord erects a sidewalk shed and repairs the brickwork, which is visibly in pretty bad shape."
And here are his photos...
Previously.
is this the same building that LIFE is in? Maybe this explains the bad landlord situation a little more?
ReplyDeleteWell, that's what happens when you caulk your windows from the outside and why properly built brick buildings have open space on the outside of the window frames and let the flashing and the brick/mortar do the waterproofing. It's so tempting to caulk up leaking window frames from the outside but when you do, you trap water on the inside and eventually everything rots. Take a look at the huge layers of caulk around the windows on that building. The brick, and everything else gets wet when it rains but those massive globs of caulk don't let the brick dry out. Plenty of other buildings in the neighborhood have bad caulking around the outside of the window frames and, doh, those buildings get leaky.
ReplyDeleteWow, with all the old brick buildings out there I'm a little surprised that this sort if thing doesn't happen more. Thank goodness nobody was hurt.
ReplyDeletethose first two photos look great. nice work.
ReplyDelete@ 2:48 PM, You're babbling.
ReplyDeleteThis is not what happens from caulking windows.
This, in particular, was caused by the air conditioner condensate drainage running down the face of the building directly above that lintel. You can see all the water scale on the bricks from years of this occurring. You can particularly see it in the photos in the "next day" photos where the air conditioner has (now) been removed from the window.
...oops.
Well, if they hadn't had quite so much caulk, really, there's a lot of it, perhaps the AC condensation would have run off and dried out quicker. Yeah, you are right, it's probably all AC condensation related but, yikes, that caulk, it's inches wide in places and there are clearly layers and layers.
ReplyDeleteThese are great photos. Great coverage too.
ReplyDeleteI'm so glad to have learned what the word lentel means and am happy it wasn't a lesson combined with an injury.
ReplyDeleteIn answer to the question, "Is this in the same building as Life Cafe and is there a connection with the landlord dispute?" The answer is, yes.
ReplyDeleteLife Cafe occupies a co-joined building adjacent to the one where the masonry fell over the weekend. One of the landlords in dispute over urgently needed structural repairs to the Life Cafe building occupies the ground floor offices where the lintel collapsed. Ironic that the landlord who should be doing his part in saving Life Cafe cannot keep his own building from falling down! Or maybe it is landlord karma!