I took a little trip through New York via Google street view. And one thing in noticed where a large amount of gantrys above the sidewalks. In almost every street I could find at least one. They seem to be build out of temporary construction scaffolding but no signs of construction work. And they always are only one floor high, often with a (green or grey) balustrade on top. I think it looks rather ugly, blocking the sight on the sometimes nice fronts of the buildings behind them.
Edit: thanks for the explanation. Seems like the New Yorkers need to invest in some more quality fassades. Remembers me of a building of my local university. Pieces of the building have fallen off. Thus the building was completely covered with a net for many years.
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NYC has a law (Local Law 11) that mandates that all buildings over 6 stories have their facades inspected for safety every 5 years. The scaffolding (called street sheds) are there to protect pedestrians from potential falling debris during those inspections.
Because NYC law requires regular building façade inspections for tall buildings to prevent it breaking off and killing people. While repairing them it’s required to protect civilians on sidewalks because multiple people died from falling debris.
When any and all construction nearby ceases, the sidewalk sheds can go.
So never will they be gone.
They protect pedestrians from falling debris.
Many of the building have old facades that are threatening to send chunks of brick or stone to the street at any time. The city requires that building owners with brick or stone facades over a certain age pay for these “gantries” as a way to protect the public until such time as the building owner updates the facade. It’s just cheaper to pay for the gantries than to actually pay to replace the facades, so they stay put with no work being done to fix the problem.
Others have covered the law, but there’s also the economic reality as well. If there is damage, the building owner is required to repair it. Some of these repairs can get quite expensive, so sometimes the scaffolding will be left up indefinitely because the owner doesn’t want to cough up the money for the repairs that would allow them to take the scaffold down.
As others have said, it protects the sidewalks from debris during facade inspection and repair. However, it is often cheaper to leave those in place indefinitely than actually repairing the facades
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Funnily enough, while not especially beautiful, many prefer to walk under them, as in Summer they shade you from the often scorching sun and in winter from lashing rain.
Personally, I think NYC would benefit from pedestrian arcades.
Hey OP, ELI5: What is a gantry?
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