the indefinite lives of sidewalk sheds in the Big Apple

From Barry Newman in the WSJ...

What goes up must come down. But when?

That is a question New Yorkers start asking the minute a truck pulls up to the front door and guys in hardhats jump out and start whacking together a sidewalk shed.

Sidewalk sheds consist of pipes, beams, planks and plywood. They can be a few feet or a few hundred feet long, and they make it possible to walk in New York without getting beaned by bricks falling off buildings. The bricks land on the sheds instead....

During the real-estate bust, New York still has between 4,000 and 6,000 sidewalk sheds. Construction sites have gone dark, but façades keep buckling and cornices keep cracking as if nothing had happened to the economy....

In New York, especially if landlords are broke, sheds go up and stay up because work is making no progress. Good times or bad, the sidewalk shed is one of those things that make New York New York....

Sheds don't just proliferate in New York. They overlap. With unemployed contractors swarming in, a job can draw 20 bids. The school's cornice, city records show, fell 14 months ago. A 234-foot shed went up. No façade work was done. When the shed permit expired a year later, the school went shopping for a sweeter deal....