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Following my recent post on the clash between historic preservation and universal design, we’ve decided to undertake a regular blog column on accessibility in buildings and cities. We hope to discuss examples from all over the world, but at first our focus will be where we are, New York City. I walk with a cane or, recently, with forearm crutches, and I find it difficult to go up or down steps or stairs. I often wonder what folks in wheelchairs do. Those of us with mobility impairments cannot easily use the subway system because there are so few elevators, and those that exist seldom are working. The bus systems are not much better, and only 239 of the city’s taxis have the necessary wheelchair lifts and ramps. (Admittedly, New York still has the largest fleet of fully-accessible taxis of any city in the nation.)

Metropolis has followed the story of handicap access since the Americans for Disability Act (ADA) was passed in 1990. Read more…

Last Saturday I attended a wedding at New York’s Players Club, which occupies a historic 19th-century mansion on Gramercy Park South, next to the National Arts Club. After getting out of the car with my forearm crutches, I navigate a brightly painted step down to the entry then push myself up four steps, where I am confronted by a curved half-flight of stairs up to the parlor floor where the event will be held. An extremely nice coat-check attendant—who seems willing to almost carry me upstairs—tells me that although the building has an elevator, it does not stop at the parlor floor. So I give one crutch to my wife, Eugenie, and slowly ascend the stairs one at a time, my left hand on the rail and my right arm in a crutch, all the while struggling against the flow of traffic heading downstairs.

Once we are on the correct level things are great and, providentially, I don’t need the bathroom two flights down. But what would I have done in a wheelchair? Read more…