Thursday, August 8, 2013
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Life
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I have become fascinated by the death of Jennifer Rosoff, a 35-year-old advertising executive who lived in New York City, and who, on August 1st, plunged 14 stories to her death when the railing of her balcony broke. The pictures of Rosoff show a very beautiful woman, slender with dark, straight hair and a lovely face. People who knew her say that she was happy, kind and generous, the type of person that everyone loves. She was at the end of a date with someone she had met on the internet. They went out on her balcony after midnight to have a drink and a smoke. Rosoff had a corner apartment on the 16th floor, and the balcony was exposed on two sides, so that the railing formed a V at the corner. She leaned backwards against the V portion of the railing. Her date cautioned her that it might not be safe to do that, to which she replied that she had done it many times before. Moments later, the railing gave way and she fell backwards to her death, landing on a scaffold outside the 1st floor. At least one pedestrian and several of the building residents heard her scream or "howl" as she fell.
The initial news reports said that she was sitting on her balcony railing when she fell. I found it totally astonishing that anyone would sit on a railing with her back to open space 15 stories up. When I read that, I admit that I blamed Rosoff for the accident. However, subsequent news reports said that she "sat or leaned" against the railing. A close examination of pictures of the balcony revealed what happened.
This picture ...
... shows very well that the horizontal metal bars of the balcony were not solid. Rather, they were hollow and open on two sides, so that a cross-section of one of the bars would look like an L. The hollow insides of each bar faced upwards and in towards the building. Rosoff would not have sat on top of the railing because she would have been sitting on a sharp edge. And in order for her to sit in the hollow portion of the top V-shaped bar, she would have had to put her feet on a foot-stool to keep from falling forward, and there is no evidence that she did that. However, she could have been leaning backwards against the railing, with her buttocks in the hollow portion of the V-shaped bar at the corner.
I found this picture on the internet ...
... of a woman leaning against a railing in a position which is probably similar to Rosoff's position. In the picture, the railing is low and the woman's buttocks extend over the top. It seems unlikely that the railing on Rosoff's balcony was low enough that she could get her buttocks over the top, but it's possible. At 5'9", she was somewhat tall for a woman, and she would have been almost 6' if she had been wearing high-heels. Regardless of how she was leaning, she was certainly pushing against the railing with the weight of her body.
This picture ...
... is the highest-resolution image that I've been able to find of the balcony (it was taken after the police removed the top V-shaped bar for inspection). If you look closely, it shows how the balcony was constructed. Little ledges or rails were welded to the sides of the posts (see the blue arrows), and the horizontal bars of the railing rested on those narrow ledges or rails. To hold the bars in place, it appears that each bar was riveted and/or welded in two places (see red arrows) probably using L-brackets (but possibly some other kind of metal attachment). Thus, each horizontal bar was held in place at only four points: by two narrow rails and two rivets or welds. Over a period of 75 or 80 years, those rivets or welds would rust from exposure to the air and/or corrode from exposure to acid rain (metal fatigue may have also played a part). The rivets holding the top horizontal bars would have taken the most stress, since those are the bars that people would naturally lean on. All it would take is one bad rivet or weld for a bar to fail, and it appears that that is what happened: Rosoff's weight caused a rivet to snap, which then caused the opposite rivet to snap. The bar then fell on the bar below it, causing those rivets to snap, and Rosoff fell backwards. (The picture at the top shows that the bottom bar bent but didn't fail.) If the railing had been made more robustly, with more rivets or welds, it probably would have lasted longer (although 75 years is certainly a long time, longer than most bridges are expected to last). I should add that the entire railing would have been more secure if there had been a post at the corner instead of on either side of the corner.
The truth is, that balcony is a very odd piece of work. Most high-rise buildings of the time had balconies with stone or cast-iron railings, or in some cases brick fronts (like the balconies above and below Rosoff's balcony). The building appears more modern than most pre-war buildings, and the builders must have been going for a completely new look. The railing appears to be made of aluminum, which behaves differently from cast iron and which might have been a new material for the builders. Thus, my opinion is that the builders were improvising, both with the appearance and the construction materials, and that balcony, with its squarish, hollow aluminum bars, is what they came up with.
As I said above, when I first read that Rosoff was sitting on the railing, I blamed her for the accident (blaming the victim allows us to feel less empathy and therefore less pain). But can she be blamed if she was merely leaning against the railing? The railing was made of metal, and it must have looked strong to her. She couldn't have known that it was assembled so poorly, and she probabaly didn't think about how old it was. On the other hand, a cousin of hers had told her that the railing looked rickety and might not be safe. Personally, I wouldn't lean against a railing so far up in space, but I can't say that for sure. After leaning on the railing many times and suffering no negative consequence, she must have developed a certain amount of faith that the railing was secure.
I think the reason I am fascinated by this incident is that I am a person who is always seeking security. For Rosoff to go from what she thought was a secure position on her balcony to her death (and such a horrible and dramatic death!) must have been an astonishing event for her. It frightens me just to think about it.
I am in my 60's, and over the years I have developed what you might call "building collapse anxiety". I worked in both towers of the World Trade Center in the years before they were attacked, and I still find it astonishing that they were brought down in the way that they were. I have also, over the years, read or seen on TV at least a dozen news stories about buildings that collapsed. A lot of people don't know this, but an entire department store full of employees and customers collapsed in Seoul, Korea in 1995 because of shoddy construction (500+ people died). And then there was the recent collapse of a manufacturing building in Bangladesh which took 1,127 lives.
Right now I am living in a Victorian house which is supposedly very well built. However, the support pillars in the basement are few and far between, and they are very thin (just two bricks wide). A strong person could knock them out with a sledge hammer, and the building would come down.
I guess that chance and insecurity are just parts of life that I must accept -- like my local pharmacist who was killed crossing a street that she had crossed 30,000 times over a lifetime. Perhaps this is why I believe so strongly in life after death: I just can't accept that any chance occurrence could completely end my existence.
The Seth material, which forms the basis of my religious beliefs, states that we subconsciously choose our deaths before they occur, but what a way to go: suddenly falling 14 stories at the end of a nice evening! Ironically, my half-sister died by jumping off a 15-story building, but I don't think about that very often because we weren't close and she chose to do it. I suppose it's worse, however, to be so miserable that you would do such a thing to yourself. In the case of Jennifer Rosoff, she had what appeared to be a wonderful life ahead of her. What a shame.
The initial news reports said that she was sitting on her balcony railing when she fell. I found it totally astonishing that anyone would sit on a railing with her back to open space 15 stories up. When I read that, I admit that I blamed Rosoff for the accident. However, subsequent news reports said that she "sat or leaned" against the railing. A close examination of pictures of the balcony revealed what happened.
This picture ...
... shows very well that the horizontal metal bars of the balcony were not solid. Rather, they were hollow and open on two sides, so that a cross-section of one of the bars would look like an L. The hollow insides of each bar faced upwards and in towards the building. Rosoff would not have sat on top of the railing because she would have been sitting on a sharp edge. And in order for her to sit in the hollow portion of the top V-shaped bar, she would have had to put her feet on a foot-stool to keep from falling forward, and there is no evidence that she did that. However, she could have been leaning backwards against the railing, with her buttocks in the hollow portion of the V-shaped bar at the corner.
I found this picture on the internet ...
... of a woman leaning against a railing in a position which is probably similar to Rosoff's position. In the picture, the railing is low and the woman's buttocks extend over the top. It seems unlikely that the railing on Rosoff's balcony was low enough that she could get her buttocks over the top, but it's possible. At 5'9", she was somewhat tall for a woman, and she would have been almost 6' if she had been wearing high-heels. Regardless of how she was leaning, she was certainly pushing against the railing with the weight of her body.
This picture ...
... is the highest-resolution image that I've been able to find of the balcony (it was taken after the police removed the top V-shaped bar for inspection). If you look closely, it shows how the balcony was constructed. Little ledges or rails were welded to the sides of the posts (see the blue arrows), and the horizontal bars of the railing rested on those narrow ledges or rails. To hold the bars in place, it appears that each bar was riveted and/or welded in two places (see red arrows) probably using L-brackets (but possibly some other kind of metal attachment). Thus, each horizontal bar was held in place at only four points: by two narrow rails and two rivets or welds. Over a period of 75 or 80 years, those rivets or welds would rust from exposure to the air and/or corrode from exposure to acid rain (metal fatigue may have also played a part). The rivets holding the top horizontal bars would have taken the most stress, since those are the bars that people would naturally lean on. All it would take is one bad rivet or weld for a bar to fail, and it appears that that is what happened: Rosoff's weight caused a rivet to snap, which then caused the opposite rivet to snap. The bar then fell on the bar below it, causing those rivets to snap, and Rosoff fell backwards. (The picture at the top shows that the bottom bar bent but didn't fail.) If the railing had been made more robustly, with more rivets or welds, it probably would have lasted longer (although 75 years is certainly a long time, longer than most bridges are expected to last). I should add that the entire railing would have been more secure if there had been a post at the corner instead of on either side of the corner.
As I said above, when I first read that Rosoff was sitting on the railing, I blamed her for the accident (blaming the victim allows us to feel less empathy and therefore less pain). But can she be blamed if she was merely leaning against the railing? The railing was made of metal, and it must have looked strong to her. She couldn't have known that it was assembled so poorly, and she probabaly didn't think about how old it was. On the other hand, a cousin of hers had told her that the railing looked rickety and might not be safe. Personally, I wouldn't lean against a railing so far up in space, but I can't say that for sure. After leaning on the railing many times and suffering no negative consequence, she must have developed a certain amount of faith that the railing was secure.
I think the reason I am fascinated by this incident is that I am a person who is always seeking security. For Rosoff to go from what she thought was a secure position on her balcony to her death (and such a horrible and dramatic death!) must have been an astonishing event for her. It frightens me just to think about it.
I am in my 60's, and over the years I have developed what you might call "building collapse anxiety". I worked in both towers of the World Trade Center in the years before they were attacked, and I still find it astonishing that they were brought down in the way that they were. I have also, over the years, read or seen on TV at least a dozen news stories about buildings that collapsed. A lot of people don't know this, but an entire department store full of employees and customers collapsed in Seoul, Korea in 1995 because of shoddy construction (500+ people died). And then there was the recent collapse of a manufacturing building in Bangladesh which took 1,127 lives.
Right now I am living in a Victorian house which is supposedly very well built. However, the support pillars in the basement are few and far between, and they are very thin (just two bricks wide). A strong person could knock them out with a sledge hammer, and the building would come down.
I guess that chance and insecurity are just parts of life that I must accept -- like my local pharmacist who was killed crossing a street that she had crossed 30,000 times over a lifetime. Perhaps this is why I believe so strongly in life after death: I just can't accept that any chance occurrence could completely end my existence.
The Seth material, which forms the basis of my religious beliefs, states that we subconsciously choose our deaths before they occur, but what a way to go: suddenly falling 14 stories at the end of a nice evening! Ironically, my half-sister died by jumping off a 15-story building, but I don't think about that very often because we weren't close and she chose to do it. I suppose it's worse, however, to be so miserable that you would do such a thing to yourself. In the case of Jennifer Rosoff, she had what appeared to be a wonderful life ahead of her. What a shame.
If you count the stories from the bottom up, please note that the second
story is within the black portion at the bottom of the building.
story is within the black portion at the bottom of the building.
5 comments:
She wasn't on her balcony and it wasn't a railing. She was on the roof of the balcony one floor below. What she thought was a railing was a decorative element on the building; that's why it broke so easily. There isn't a door from her apartment to this area and it was very narrow--because it wasn't a balcony, but the roof. She had to climb in and out of the window to access it. I'm sure that her apartment wasn't advertised as having a balcony; however, did building managers know that renters used it as a balcony?
Anonymous, I entertained your idea for a while, but I am sure now that you are wrong. A close examination of the third photo in this article shows the tops of the French doors leading onto the terrace. The French doors (very narrow doors) are to the left of the windows. The French doors were actually mentioned in one of the news articles. If the balcony wasn't a proper balcony, there wouldn't be a door opening onto it. That leaves us with the puzzling question of why the railing was made so poorly at a time when buildings were made even more sturdily than they are today.
it may have been called the 17th floor, but cuz the bldg doesn't have a 13th floor, it was only 16 floors up--not 17. regardless, both her apt and the one below it have direct access to the balcony. she would not have needed to crawl thru a window. she was on her own balcony, not the roof of the balcony of the apt below her. and it is a balcony, which has since been reconstructed. the anonymous poster is totally incorrect. i live across the street. my doorman saw her fall. i saw the aftermath of the fall. i saw the bldg and the investigation--and the anonymous poster is just flat out wrong. RIP Jennifer.
i think it's also interesting to note that of all the apartments with balconies in this building, they all have brick walls, except those on jennifer's floor. the balconies on her floor are the only ones that use railings exclusively made without brick. i'd post a picture, but this form doesn't allow that. regardless, all balconies in her bldg use brick walls/railings, except those on her floor.
Thank you for correcting me regarding the number of stories. I will fix the article.
Regarding the architecture of the building, I think the top corner balconies were meant as a design statement.
This event must have really affected you if you are still thinking about it several years later. As for me, I think that Rosoff was incautious to have relied on the integrity of the railing. She must have thought that it was welded together -- but even welds weaken with time.
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