Child's fall from window highlights inspection issues

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A reader reports that in the early evening of Friday, August 4, a young child fell from an upper story window of the apartment building at 909 Park Avenue. A neighbor reported the child appeared to have a severe head injury, but was still alive when EMTs left the scene.

The incident comes only days after Gov. Corzine signed into law a bill strengthening New Jersey's window guard laws, as reported in both the Ledger ("At a tragic site, window-guard rules bolstered") and the NY Times ("Corzine Signs Window-Guard Law").

Sadly, the new law may not have helped save this child -- the news stories only mention windows that slide up and down. As you can see from the photo, the windows in 909 Park Avenue are classic examples of the casement windows that were all the rage in the 1930s, from which the building dates.

Originally the site of the Park Avenue Baptist Church (long ago merged with First Church into First-Park Baptist Church), the Art Moderne apartment building which replaced it was one of the crème de la crème Plainfield addresses through the 1960s. With terraces and glass block window walls, it was the very summit of elegant apartment living in Plainfield.

In fact, when I first moved to Plainfield in the early 1980s, I met a doctor's widow who had lived there for years and was very reluctant to move even though the owners at that time were making no investment in maintaining the building.

Over the years, it changed hands several times, each time getting to look shabbier and shabbier. It seems only to have been a method for absentee landlords to extract cash from the community without making any investment in keeping the property in decent shape.

The building recently changed hands again, to another investor-landlord. A Plainfield investor had looked into purchasing the property but withdrew after seeing the condition of the building from the inside, feeling it would turn into an endless 'money pit.'

The tragedy involving this young child only underscores other issues that seem never to get enough attention in reference to Plainfield's larger multi-family properties:

• Did the state, which must inspect the building every 5 years, do everything it could to ensure the windows are safe?
  
  
• What is the role of local code inspectors in such cases?
  
  
• What action is the Administration taking in light of this tragic incident?

The condition of this once-fine building has bred not only an avoidable accident, but is a blight on Plainfield's reputation for caring about historic properties.

-- Dan Damon

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