One of the first fire escapes of any type was invented in 18th-century England. In 1784, Daniel Maseres, of England, invented a machine called a fire escape, which, being fastened to the window, would enable a person to descend to the street without injury.
Abraham Wivell created a variation on the design, including an escape chute, after becoming superintendent of the "Royal Society for the Protection of Life from Fire." The first modern fire escape was patented by Anna Conelly in 1887. Henry Vieregg patented a US fire escape in Grand Island, NE in November 8, 1898 (serial number 681,672), which was designed for traveling businessmen. As
building codes became more common in countries around the turn of the 20th century, fire safety became an important concern for new construction. Building owners were increasingly required to provide adequate escape routes, and at the time, fire escapes seemed the best option available. Not only could they be included in new construction at a low cost, but they could very easily be added to existing construction. As building codes evolved and more safety concerns were addressed over subsequent editions, all construction above a certain number of stories was required to have a second means of egress, and external fire escapes were allowed as a retrofit option for existing buildings prior to the post-World War II period. In the 1930s, the enclosed tubular chute-type fire escape became widely accepted for schools, hospitals and other institutions, replacing the open iron ladder type. Its main advantage was that people would have no reason to use it for anything other than a fire escape, and patients could be slid down it on their bedding in event of fire. However, with the rise of
urban sprawl in the mid-20th century, particularly the increase in
public housing in cities in the United States and Europe in the 1950s and 1960s, certain problems with fire escapes became clear. In the poorer areas of several major American cities, such as New York, Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh, fire escapes were commonly used for everything but their intended purpose. Some residents placed items on the fire escape (chairs, bicycles or plants), which added weight to the structure and impeded its use as an emergency escape. In the hot summer months, residents of mid-rise apartment buildings would sleep outside on the platforms of their fire escapes. The popularity of using fire escapes for non-emergency use is attested to in pop culture. A plot premise of
Cornell Woolrich's 1947 short story, "The Boy Cried Murder" is a boy who, while sleeping on a fire escape, witnesses a murder in a neighboring apartment; this story received a film adaptation as the suspense thriller
The Window (1949). The practice of sleeping on fire escapes can also be seen in
Alfred Hitchcock's 1954 movie
Rear Window (also based on a Woolrich short story), as well as
Weegee's photography of the
Lower East Side. Diagonal shadows of fire escapes made them a constant motif in
film noir, and the balcony scene of
Romeo and Juliet was transposed to a fire escape for the musical
West Side Story. Fire escapes could also be used to comic effect, as seen in
Stanley Kramer's 1963 comedy ''
It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World''. The installation of window
air conditioners in individual apartment units with fire escape-facing windows, often installed against code or local ordinance by residents, which require the unit to be affixed to the window sash, also make a fire escape nearly useless in the summer months; the bulk and weight of an air conditioner unit placed onto or over a fire escape in an emergency also creates additional danger for firefighters and evacuees.
Boston Herald American photographer
Stanley Forman won a 1976
Pulitzer Prize for the photograph
Fire Escape Collapse, capturing a young woman and child plunging from a faulty fire escape during a 1975 Boston fire. The controversial image resulted in some jurisdictions enacting tougher fire safety codes. File:US368816-drawings-page-1.png|Anna Connelly's 1887 patent, no. US368816A, for a fire escape File:Houghton's Fire Escape 1877.jpg|Houghton's portable fire escape 1877 File:Krause Bldg.jpg|Fire escape at the Krause Building on
East 4th Street,
Cleveland ==High-rise fire escapes==