In July 2026, the sidewalk scaffolding shed at The Wyoming, 849-853 Seventh Avenue, came down after a decade. Before the next morning was out, new scaffolding was going up in its place.
Here is what the city’s own records show at that one address as of July 27, 2026:
- 31 open Department of Buildings violations (see the record)
- 12 outstanding OATH cases, more than $25,000 unpaid, including a 2024 facade case where the owner simply did not appear for the hearing
- $313,020 in accrued facade-program penalties the city has never collected
- Zero facade repair permits in ten years under scaffolding. Not one appears anywhere in DOB’s public permit records.
The decade under the shed
The Wyoming is a 12-story, 96-unit apartment building with a stone, terra cotta, and limestone facade, owned by W&HM Realty Partners Co., LLC and managed by WAM Partners, a family real estate firm operating in New York since 1919. A sidewalk shed has stood in front of it continuously since August 2016, renewed eleven consecutive times, most recently this April. DOB records show earlier sheds at the property going back to the 1990s.
And the decade shows. The shed has turned the block dark and narrow, and what has grown beneath it is exactly what neighbors have been reporting for years: encampments, garbage pileups, obstructed street and subway access, open drug use, and a corner that looks abandoned while the building above it collects rent. No work happens overhead. In our member survey this spring, scaffolding ranked among the neighborhood’s top concerns, and this shed is the reason why.
A sidewalk shed is supposed to be a bargain with the public: the building takes your sidewalk and your daylight for a while, and in exchange the facade above you gets fixed. The Wyoming’s facade has been rated UNSAFE under the city’s Facade Inspection Safety Program continuously since February 2019. The other half of the bargain never arrived. The last construction permit at the building expired in 2021. The newest violation, loose ceiling tiles over the subway entrance, is from this February and still active.
The law that was supposed to end this
The City Council’s Get Sheds Down legislation, Local Law 48 of 2025, capped new and renewed shed permits at 90 days. It took effect on January 12, 2026, and its transition rule is explicit: permits issued before that date run to their natural expiration, and any renewal afterward must comply with the new 90-day term. On April 20, 2026, more than three months after the law took effect, DOB renewed The Wyoming’s shed permit anyway, for a full 365 days.
The Council Member’s letter
On June 30, Council Member Gale Brewer wrote to DOB Commissioner Ahmed Tigani about The Wyoming. Her letter describes homeless encampments, garbage, obstructed subway access, and open drug use beneath the sheds, and records one sentence that residents have been repeating since: “The property manager claims their work timeline needs a period of 100 years to be completed.” One hundred years, from a management company that is itself 107 years old.
A shed replaces a shed
In mid July the old shed began coming down, not because repairs were finished, but, as residents were told, because the shed itself had deteriorated to the point of being a violation. Within the same day a new shed was rising on the same corner. As of publication, DOB’s records show no new permit, no removal filing, and no new job number for the replacement, and still no repair permit for the building above it. The new scaffolding stands on the same one-year renewal that the 90-day law should have made impossible.
The letter awaiting an answer
All of this lands at a moment when DOB is under the brightest spotlight it has faced in years. Earlier this month, two columns buckled on the 21st floor of 235 East 42nd Street, the former Pfizer Building, forcing a partial vacate order and sending the agency into citywide construction safety sweeps. An agency sweeping the city for structural risk has a ready-made case sitting on Seventh Avenue: a facade its own program has rated UNSAFE for seven years, a decade of scaffolding, and its own records showing no repair ever permitted.
Commissioner Tigani has now had Council Member Brewer’s letter since June 30. As of this writing it has gone unanswered. It is not the first time a written answer from DOB has gone missing in this neighborhood, we have documented that pattern before. Answering it would not require new laws or new resources, only the ones that already exist: enforce the 90-day shed rule as written, collect the penalties already on the books, and compel a repair timeline for The Wyoming measured in months rather than centuries. The neighborhood is watching for the response, and so is this association.
What you can do
File a complaint. Anyone can report this shed. Use 311’s Scaffold or Sidewalk Shed Complaint, address 849 7th Avenue, Manhattan. Every complaint creates a record DOB must answer.
Back the Council Member’s push. Community Board 5 (office@cb5.org) and Council Member Brewer’s office (District6@council.nyc.gov) are both on this. A short note saying this block matters keeps it on their desks.
Join us. This article exists because neighbors organized. Become a member or get in touch, the next fight on this corridor will need more of us.
Authored by Jacob van Winkle