Theatre Design & Technology - Oct 1967 - 53

tainly, you can allow a little bit more emptying time for a
room of that kind as against a room that has scenery. Incidentally, another small, but very important, point. You always see an exit door right next to the proscenium in most
theatres. Now, this is the worst thing you can do. We provided that the first exit should be a certain distance away
from the stage, rather than right on top of it. So this code
has been built point after point on scientific loading and unloading, a definite relationship of the hazard to the use. In
this way, I hope and believe that we compiled a code that
will permit you to build any kind of theatre, whether it is
thrust stage, theatre-in-the-round, proscenium or any other
form.
MODERATOR: I want to get back to Mr. Schlanger in a minute because I think we can probably get a three sentence
wrap-up of exactly what the revised code means to theatre
building. Mr. Stedfast has to catch a plane in just about ten
minutes and, therefore, I thought we would ask him to take
the floor.

And that's the impasse I understand we are in now. The
Board of Aldermen was consistently very ignorant in its approach to the proper basis of writing a building code. There
was a discussion in New York that there should be a building commission and that changes in the code, the updating
of the code, should be the perogative of that commission.
That would be the proper way, instead of letting a lot of
lawyers in the city council determine what to do about a
building code. When the New York State Building Code program came into being, the legislature of the State of New
York delved into the study of code drafting. They set up a
commission on the building code which made many determinations as to how the code should be prepared. One thing
that was decided was that the building code was not a leg-

islative matter for writing by the state legislature. A building
code commission was established which is now in the division of housing, but it is a somewhat independent organization and can arrive at determinations purely on a technical
basis of knowledge of what's right and what's wrong in the
building field. If the New York State Code had been subSTEDFAST: I would like to re-emphasize the importance of mitted to the legislature of the State of New York on the
the fact that the work in New York, when it is completed, sal"!le basis that the New York City building codes have
will be carefully studied by other cities and other jurisdic- been submitted to the City Councilor the Board of Aldermen
tions throughout the country, for if what I assume to be true of this city, we would be as backward in the State of New
comes to pass, it will spawn code improvements throughout York with the same problem that we have always had in
the country. I think that what it takes is the kind of people the city.
who are involved in the New York work. Being careful in MODERATOR: Thank you, Commissioner. I have two charges
their research as they have been, pushing hard for improve- now. One is to Ben Schlanger. I hope he is preparing that
ments which are difficult to make in the political atmos- nice three sentence precis for us. The second is to Deputy
phere. I see the new New York building code as a signifi- Commissioner of Buildings, Joseph Ferro. He has just arcant development reflecting the kind of objectives which Mr. rived and I want to give him just a little time to phrase his
Schlanger has outlined.
answer to these questions. One is, what is happening with

MODERATOR: Our good friend, Commissioner Arthur Benline, has been studying codes and revising them-may I say
this-for longer than I am old. Furthermore, he has contributed immeasurably to the growth of the USITT as well as
served as our USITT consultant on this project.

the revision of the New York City Building Code 7 The second
question I want to ask on behalf of the Institute is, what
can we do to help you get that code passed? Our next
speaker is Mr. William Correale who is the Technical Director for the New York City Building Code.

BEN LINE: Building codes are strange things, as we all
know. In too many instances, they have been the creation of
the local board of aldermen or been influenced by the vote
of the city councilmen, or someone else who doesn't know
the first thing about building codes. They do know a great
many things about the pressures brought upon them. Building departments are subject to criticism also. In too many
municipalities where I have built theatres, the examiner initially suggests there must be something wrong with a proposed theatre and the preliminary plans he has examined.
There must be a harder way of doing it. He says in effect:
"Let's look over our code and see if we can't find some difficult things to do to stop you from what you propose to do.
Let's do it in a much more difficult way than you, or I, or
anybody else has thought is necessary." The fire department
contributes very heavily to this, too. The fire department
says, "There was a fire in the Iroquois Theatre in 1903
and let's not have another fire; so let's do things which
have no connection with the Iroquois fire and let's do it the
hard way in this connection with your theatre." I have built
a great many theatres in a great many cities-Baltimore,
Providence, Akron, Kansas City, Pittsburgh, Syracuse-town
after town for Loew's circuit particularly, and in each case
we had a great deal of difficulty trying to fight the local
municipalities. Occasionally, however, we would come across
a local official who was foresighted, who knew what his
problem was, who had some knowledge of what people were
doing in other jurisdictions; it was a great treat to get into
a town like that.

CORREALE: I want to talk about the code as a code rather
than just what it says about places of assembly specifically.
So I am going to pick out a few odds and ends from a collection of material that I have here with respect to the code
as a complete document and pick out a few elements within
each major subdivision of the code even though it may
sound out of place.

One thing I have always felt was radically wrong was having
a Board of Aldermen or a City Council write building codes.

OCTOBER, 1967

The code was prepared by the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, as you know. About a million dollars was spent in getting the work done, and about a hundred thousand dollars
came from private industry. This took four years to complete.
You have been told that it is a performance type document
with all of the advantages of flexibility and design, use of
material and techniques, and of the versatility and broad latitude which it gives designers. We have enlisted the assistance of industry and the professions. As Joel pointed out,
at moments it was kind of rough, but it was very much
needed and very worthwhile. We developed a code which
we feel represents the opinion and views of industry as a
whole. Of the 200 separate organizations participating, about
forty are from New York City. Most of the rest come from
centers across the entire country' and a few of them are representatives from foreign countries.
Among the administrative items I might mention is that in
the new code greater control is given to architects and engineers in the filing of plans, the acceptance of materials,
and the supervision of critical elements of construction. We
feel that this goes far in reducing the over-all time from the
initiation of planning to the issuance of the certificate of
occupancy and thereby reduces the cost to the owner. Another item of policy that we tried to incorporate was to consolidate, within the Building Department under the Commis-

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