Safety - Lack of Barred Windows in the City (Stuyvesant: best neighborhoods, apartments)
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I moved to NYC going on my 3rd month now and I have family in some areas that occasionally take me through some bad areas and also I have been to places that border bad areas and I noticed the lack of bars on the windows.
I moved from Miami, FL where it is standard to have every window barred up if you're in a bad area. It is a way I could always distinguish between which neighborhoods not to move into.
Maybe I am over observing, but does anyone in NYC use the barred window method to deter crime or is everyone armed with shotguns waiting behind their doors!!
With that being said, what is the best form of security you use when your in your apartment/home/condo etc...???/
In most bad neighborhoods people do have bars. In my neighborhood, which is very low-crime, some people have bars on first floor windows, I assume left over from when there was more crime in the city overall. I think as crime has gone down, a lot of people have taken bars off except in the worst areas. They're so depressing.
Most Ground Floor or Basement windows have bars new or old due to easy breakins....you see this in good areas , in bad areas usually all floors have bars...
Many times, you will find security devices inside the units, not on the exterior of the building. The FDNY requires the security devices to be quick release, with no key, from the inside, so that the tenant can get out of the unit in the event of a fire. Also, in the case of an upper floor unit accessible by fire escape, where a resident wishes security bars, the device cannot be mounted outside as that would block egress of the fire escape, as the security grill would project beyond the building, so they are interior frame-mounted.
A relative of mine has security bars on the first floor of their brownstone in Brooklyn (a good neighborhood too), that look more like ornamental grillwork, with planter boxes and the like, rather than less expensive security bars that do evoke images of a correctional environment.
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All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages.
~William Shakespeare (As You Like It Act II, Scene VII)
I would never live in any apartment with bars on the windows, it is like a prison cell.
I find also looking at apartments with bars on the windows, (not the iron ones like on the ground floors of park Slope Brownstones), but the metal ones, they look like crap.
Even some very expensive, very safe neighborhoods have bars on the windows of the first floor. Please don't use this as a guideline to judge the neighborhood. Look up stats and speak with people familiar with the area. There are also some not so aesthetically pleasing areas that are perfectly safe to live in as well.
I moved to NYC going on my 3rd month now and I have family in some areas that occasionally take me through some bad areas and also I have been to places that border bad areas and I noticed the lack of bars on the windows.
I moved from Miami, FL where it is standard to have every window barred up if you're in a bad area. It is a way I could always distinguish between which neighborhoods not to move into.
For one thing ,the crime rate in Miami is much much higher than NYC so there may be much more of a need for bars on windows.The fact is that the crime rate in average Miami neighborhoods is higher than the crime rate in some of the higher crime neighborhoods of NYC.
You can't use bars on windows as barometer of crime in a neighborhood here because there are lots and lots of bars on windows in some of the best neighborhoods.Most of the barred windows in NYC are remnants of the 70's,80's and 90's when the crime rate was a lot higher and it seems like there are less and less barred windows around with each passing year.
Miami is also skewed by Spanish Revival architecture, where ornamental wrought iron grillwork is often very prominent.
__________________
All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages.
~William Shakespeare (As You Like It Act II, Scene VII)
Bars on windows often says more about the psychology of the people inside the apartment than the behavior of the people outside the apartment.
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Grew up in the 70s in Prospect Lefferts Gardens, and Flatbush in general.
Moved in the 80s near Brooklyn College, and Flatbush generally.
NO BARS, NO BARS, NO BARS!! (Ornamental Brownstone the exception).
We used to marvel at the prisons people built to protect themselves in poor areas like East NY, Brownsville, Bed stuy, New Lots, etc.
Even in a place like Stuyvesant Heights, save the ornamental, NO BARS!!!
The Bourgoise convention was not only were "bars" unattractive, but they made the statement that YOU lived in an unsafe area. If the area was that unsafe, then MOVE!!
We could not imagine inviting anyone to a bar clad home. It w/b embarrassing!
I do not believe I have ever been inside such a home, nor known anyone to have so clad their home. I've seen many though....
Last edited by jcoltrane; 11-19-2012 at 01:20 PM..
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