Fire escapes of yore

Recently at work my project team has been correctly sizing and locating our fire escape stairs in our building. It's actually a longwinded task that would likely bore you if I explained it. People probably don't think much about fire escapes and life safety egress in buildings, but we architects do. In fact, we're practically obsessed with it because the code dictates so much about what we can do with our buildings. Anyways, fire escapes on the exterior of buildings are a thing of the past, but they sure had a fantastic architectural flavor. They did more than accomodate code, they were an ornament to the building.

This fire escape resides in Bryan, Texas. It looks as if it is more than an escape, but the actual entry to the office. All this photo needs is a person sitting about mid way up reading a book. Maybe Fahrenheit 451 would be appropriate.