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Today's Urban Design Observation: What Exactly are These Pieces of Street Furniture, and How Do They Help Firefighters?

By Rain Noe - March 5, 2018

In the city you've seen these convenient two-headed pieces of street furniture sticking out of buildings or the sidewalk, and perhaps you've even sat on them from time to time:

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So what exactly are they? It depends, at least in New York City, on what color they're painted. You'll see them in red, yellow or green here, they only exist in front of buildings that are taller than 75 feet/six stories, and all of them feature Y-shaped "Siamese" connections.

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The red ones connect to the building's standpipe system. Inside the building, a standpipe is that red vertical pipe that you'll often see left exposed in the stairwell, and it supplies water to hose connections on each floor.

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When firefighters arrive on scene, they'll plug a hose from the pumper truck into the standpipe connection. They can either pump water directly from the truck's 500-gallon tank, or connect a second hose from the truck to a hydrant; either way it goes through the pumper truck so that firefighters can modulate the pressure with the truck's on-board controls.

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The green ones connect to the building's sprinkler system.

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And finally, the yellow ones are for buildings that have the standpipe and sprinkler systems connected.

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All of the connections are Siamese, i.e. doubled, in case more water/pressure is required. Having two connections also serves as insurance; if the threads are damaged on one connection, the hose can be attached to the other.

So now you know.

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Today's Urban Design Observation: What Exactly are These Pieces of Street Furniture, and How Do They Help Firefighters?

Jamie Freedom

2 years ago

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NY's paint scheme is actually good design. Up here in Canada, there is no colour designation and it's relied on signage to describe what the Siamese connection is for.

Also the term Siamese connection is getting phased out for Fire Department Connection.

The reason they have two 2½" connections is to get the volume of water into bigger systems (because 2½” used to be the largest diameter of hose trucks carried) it's a legacy thing in the building codes, pretty much all pumpers across north America carry 4" hose now. One day we might start to see single 4" FDC's at buildings.

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Steve Caruso

2 years ago

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These seem more like street appliances than street furniture... maybe?

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Rain Noe

I’m a lapsed industrial designer. I was born in NYC and figured I’d die there, but a few years ago I abandoned New York to live on a farm in the countryside with my wife. We have six dogs.