The indelible scene-setter of New York is not a yellow taxi cab, or the Brooklyn Bridge, or the Empire State Building. It’s a plastic orange cylinder rising from the center of traffic-clogged city streets, spewing steam. These steam funnels are as quintessentially New York as the subway or corner bodegas and are favored by movie and television directors to show that a story is set in Manhattan.
Created over a century ago, New York’s steam system is the oldest and largest in the country, with over 100 miles of pipes. The utility company Consolidated Edison uses this below-ground network of pipes to supply steam for heating, cooling and other commercial uses around Manhattan.
I spoke with Patrick McGeehan, who covers city infrastructure, about this landmark many New Yorkers notice, but few know anything about.
You mention in your reporting that these steam funnels are found only in Manhattan, not in any other borough. Why is that?
People think they’re everywhere, but they’re really just everywhere in Manhattan, basically in the business district. That’s because the main customers for the steam that Con Ed is making and selling are buildings: residential and commercial high-rises. Those buildings use the steam for heating their interior spaces, for making hot water and for some other purposes, like dry cleaning.
Do these steam funnels present any kind of danger? Is the steam clean for pedestrians to be walking through?
If it’s steam escaping from one of these steam mains, it’s clean. What Con Ed does is take the city’s tap water — the same water a lot of people drink or make bagels with — and purify it.
It’s hazardous mostly because of how hot it is. The steam is heated way past the boiling point of water — to 400-plus degrees — when it’s moving through the pipes, so the steam coming up is just very hot and could burn somebody.
And that’s the point of the funnels, right — to send the steam upward so it cools before it interacts with people?
There are two main reasons to get it away from the pedestrians. One is so that they’re not getting hit with the steam as they walk on the sidewalks, and the other is to get it out of the traffic so that it’s not fogging up the view of drivers, while they’re driving on the streets in New York.
This system is both intricate and very old. What kind of issues arise within it?
We’ve had a number of explosions of steam mains. I covered one in 2007, a memorable one because it was right near Grand Central, right in the middle of a busy intersection, right around rush hour. And it essentially blew up like a geyser and was spewing a fairly noxious mix of water, steam and what appeared to be asbestos because the pipe was so old. There was a lot of asbestos lining those old pipes. So that was a very scary situation.
Have any changes been made since then to limit that risk?
The company decided to start incorporating some modern technology into the system, including equipment that would help them monitor the conditions inside these pipes so that they would have a better sense that something like that was about to happen.
Is there any possibility that the steam funnels get phased out as the city modernizes?
No. It seems like something that would go the way of the dodo bird, right? But actually, the opposite is happening. Con Ed is in the process of trying to sign up more corporate customers for its steam. New York City has a law now that these high-rise buildings have to reduce their carbon footprints. Con Ed is making a pitch to a lot of those buildings to say, “Hey, you know you could get rid of your boiler and take our steam and cut down on your use of whatever fuel you use to fire your boiler.”
And then the twist on that is that Con Ed uses natural gas to make the steam in the first place, so Con Ed also has a burden now to try to reduce its use of fossil fuel.
What makes these steam funnels such a New York institution?
It’s a function of the size of New York and the scope of its steam system. And I think, also, how often movies and TV shows are filmed on the streets of New York.
A good example is in one of the final episodes of the show “Succession.” There’s a scene where the character played by Kieran Culkin is leaving his father’s funeral. And they’re filming on East 55th Street in Midtown, and they’re panning as he’s walking down the middle of the street. And right in the middle of the street is a giant Con Ed steam funnel, and he walks right past it. I don’t know that they chose that, but I think it was sort of perfect for setting it in New York. When you see one of these, you know you’re in New York.
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Duct tape
Dear Diary:
Let’s say you accidentally drop the key for your bike lock through the sidewalk grate on a Friday afternoon in front of the Japanese market on Smith Street in Cobble Hill.
What are you going to do?
If you call 311, you will be told to ask the property owner to contact the utility company responsible for the grate to try to retrieve the key.
Or you can skip the red tape and go with duct tape instead. And a tape measure.
Wrap the duct tape’s sticky side out on the tip of the measure’s blade. Lower strategically. Apply slight pressure upon contact. Raise your prize slowly and carefully, inch by inch, like operating an arcade claw machine.
