Multiple Dwelling Law § 237 · Title 2. Fire Protection
Stair construction
Text — Law content up to date as of August 28, 2026, as published by the New York State Senate (Open Legislation)
§ 237. Stair construction. 1. Every stair in a tenement erected after April twelfth, nineteen hundred one, shall be accessible on the entrance story from a street or street court, or from an inner court which connects directly with a street.
2. All such stairs shall have risers of eight inches or less and treads at least ten inches in clear width and three feet in clear length.
3. Winding stairs shall be unlawful except in a tenement provided with a passenger elevator. When winding stairs or radial steps are installed or used, the strings from which the risers radiate shall be curved on a circle of at least one foot diameter, the treads shall be at least four inches wide at the string, not including the nosing, and the angle formed by the face of each riser and the string shall not diverge more than forty degrees from a line normal to the string at the intersection of such riser. It shall be unlawful to construct new winding stairs.
4. Stairs constructed after April eighteenth, nineteen hundred twenty-nine, shall comply with the provisions of subdivisions two to six inclusive of section fifty-two.
Source of truth
- Edition
- Law content up to date as of August 28, 2026, as published by the New York State Senate (Open Legislation)
- Official file
- https://legislation.nysenate.gov/pdf/laws/MDW237
- Text hash
- sha256 98ae5ec2522b078fea5a3f256b327333f336ec7fa9f7bf8ff2f33d54e2e9f232
- Composed by
- gen_ny_statutes.py 2026-11-10: the Senate's Open Legislation law tree (GET /api/3/laws/<ID>?full=true) read in document order; the Senate's PDF of the whole law (GET /pdf/laws/<ID>?full=true), read with PDFium, prints the same words in the same order
Procedural information only. Not legal advice and not a substitute for the advice of an attorney. Confirm the current text with the official publisher before relying on it.