apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

Last I checked altering a fire escape was prohibited in NYC, so this wouldn't work around here.

Can't really tell how big it is, but might make an interesting hot tub. Not on a fire escape though.

it looks like some kind of industrial funnel-like they would use in making beer or bread or candy or something-since is all green, I am thinking copper-so maybe a small brewery's hop-holder? Just a guess anyways. I think that I would worry about it coming loose and plunking somebody on the head-when I was in art school in philly, a TV went out a window and almost hit a cop.....(random free-association)

It doesn't look like it IS altering the fire escape, to judge by the one a floor down. And it just might be fastened onto the building really well. I prefer the Pollyanna outlook when something's as terrific looking as this. If I saw this while wandering Kansas City alleys, I'd have to seek out the perps and ask them about it, I like it so. . . .

My guess is a roof to a cupola or something wild like that, although that doesn't explain the tub bit of it. Sweet. Oh, how I adore old Midwestern buildings...

Once would assume that the funnel was left over from the building's previous incarnation. There may have been an opening right above it, or a pipe from higher up, to allow whatever product they manufacured or disposed to be funneled into a vessel or a vehicle waiting below. Unless you know what went on in that building before it was converted to apartments there is no way of knowing what it was used for.

I agree with Green - probably a funnel for whatever the building's previous industrial tennant manufactured.

When that thing falls it'll kill somebody.