Tenement Basements

I was walking across East 4th Street this morning, when I saw these rickety cellar doors, guarded by a tall orange cone:

Rickety cellar doors, open.

Peering downstairs, to see if there was anything interesting down there, I saw something really interesting! There was a wooden wall at the bottom of the stairs, with concrete blocks behind it:

Wooden wall.

The concrete blocks were not interesting; it was the wooden wall that was interesting. This was probably a load-bearing wall until recently.

No one ever said that tenements were pretty. In fact, they're kind of gritty!

And that's the end of my little ditty.

#eastvillage #cellardoors #opendoors #basements #orangecones #4thstreet