An Elegant & Accessible Solution
My real estate office (Circa Properties) is located in a very urban building on S. Kingshighway at Landsdowne (map). The building’s owner, an Architect, lives with his family in one of the upstairs apartments.
This summer as I was about to return to work he make access easier. Since the building was built in 1922 the commercial storefront spaces have always had a single step at each entrance.
As you can see above he devised a simple and elegant solution to eliminate the steps. At each end of the new section of sidewalk is a gentle slope, allowing someone access without a step. Planting space softens the area and visually breaks up the previously large amount of concrete. Rather than a bunch of ramps this solution looks very thoughtful.
I’ve never had my wheelchair at the office but if I did getting inside would no longer be an issue.
I was going to give you grief about all the concrete, but looking at a 2002 aerial photo shows that any grass is a big improvement over the no-grass-at-all that was there before.
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One design concern I see is having only one step – I was always taught to either do none or to do two or more; one step ends up being a trip hazard since it’s hard(er) for people to notice. In an ideal world, the outer walk should’ve been raised as well, with maybe half a step at the curb line, but I give your landlord huge props for trying hard to do the right thing – we need more like him/her!
On the other side of the coin, I was always taught to pay attention where I was putting my feet. Maybe single steps are part of natural selection…
Paul’s a good guy.
I like the lack of ramps while still solving the problem. I agree that one step might get lost in the shuffle. I’m not sure the open space is worth the maintenance expense, it might have been more interesting and practical to do something with stone or another texture to contrast with the concrete, but all in all it is a good effort.
It’s kind of amazing how much of a difference that one tiny strip of grass makes. So many city commercial buildings have way too much paved area in front of them, and this little grass stip is not only attractive, but I guess it does its own small part to reduce rainwater runoff as well.
The real problem here seems to be the poor planning way back in 1922 I think.
Why do we need the double decker sidewalk? Why not just one wider side walk and we wouldn’t have a step issue and we could have a wider strip of grass.
On the other hand if I was a shop owner I would’t want to have the added hassle of maintaining that little strip of grass. Maybe the building should have been put closer to the street in the first place. Then again on the other hand, it’s probably better being set back where it is because down the street (the urbanist in me does not allow me to say “down the road”) when we get street cars running up & down Kingshighway we might need that extra space.