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Jun 09, 2023

Why is There So Much Scaffolding in New York City?

How more than 300 miles of scaffolding ate New York City

How more than 300 miles of scaffolding ate New York City

April 1, 2023

Reading Time: 8 minutes

The 13-story co-op on Edgecombe Avenue in Sugar Hill is a handsome neo-Georgian building with a rich history woven through with both the New York Yankees and the Harlem Renaissance.

It has one other notable feature: the city's longest-standing sidewalk shed—those omnipresent hunter-green, steel-and-wood structures that are universally loathed by New Yorkers even as they are there to protect pedestrians from falling masonry and other debris. This particular shed was erected more than 6,180 days ago, in April 2006.

Sheds, which are used for new construction, demolition, renovation, and repairs to aging building façades, are supposed to be temporary. Instead, they have become an enduring part of the obstacle course that is New York. Nowhere else in the world, experts say, have sidewalk sheds become such a pervasive feature of the urban landscape.

On a recent stroll along 36th Street, from Eighth Avenue to Madison, I encountered 15 separate sidewalk sheds, many of them dark and foreboding. In most cases, it did not appear that there was any repair or construction work going on.

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