The page above was added to the library scan of a 1924 code. (I assume it was added to any number of old codes, but I only saw it in the one document.) In one sense, that statement is straightforward and means exactly what it says: anyone designing a new structure should be using the current code rather than one almost a century out of date. In another sense…
One of my end-of-the-years tasks is cleaning up whatever messes I’ve made in our office library by adding new items haphazardly, and doing so gives me the opportunity to review what we’ve got. In straight-up numbers, what we’ve got are some 6500 texts on engineering, architecture, history (particularly of New York), and historic preservation, with a few other topics thrown in. More than half of the library is electronic, consisting of, for example, the New York City 1892 building laws, downloaded from the Internet Archive. The remainder consists of books on bookcases, which perhaps cements my reputation for liking old things. But here’s the magic question that is raised by that warning statement above: what content matters?
I would not assume that the 1892 NYC code “reflects current scientific knowledge, policies, or practices.” It quite obviously reflects those of 1892. But it also reflects the logic of thousands of extant buildings across Manhattan and The Bronx, which seems pretty current to me. If I want to understand those buildings, whether as an academic exercise or because I’m working on one of them in my day job as a practicing engineer, it helps to know how they were designed and built. The people responsible for them are all long gone, and the original records for the vast majority of those buildings are somewhere between very difficult to find and impossible to find. The closest I’m likely to get to understanding the concerns of the designers and builders is to look at the codes and design manuals that they used. Books of that type make up a large percentage of our library for exactly that reason.
One last thought, which verges on sophistry but which I mean seriously: what does “current” refer to? Obviously, the people who wrote that statement meant our current day, whenever that is. (In other words, they may have written it in 2007, but they meant for it to mean 2021 when read by someone in 2021.) But to someone designing a building in New York in 1893, “current practice” meant the practices of 1893, which would include the 1892 code. And the 1892 code, by definition, reflects current knowledge, policy, and practice for the early 1890s. If I’m trying to mentally reconstruct a past design so that I understand it for today’s work, the 1892 code reflects the then-current reality that is more important for that purpose than the now-current code is. And in that case, the warning should be applied, for me, to now-current codes rather than then-current codes.
