This is a collection of NY Times news stories that appear when you search the 150+ years of the NY Times archives for the phrase “building collapse”.  If you do not understand why building codes exist, I believe this should help. 

CONSTRUCTION COLLAPSE IN TIMES SQUARE: THE BUILDING

Builders Had Good Record On Safety, City Says

It is intended to be a towering symbol of the rebirth of Times Square, but the mirrored Conde Nast building under construction at Broadway and 42d Street has so far drawn attention mostly because of its spectacular accidents. The collapse of an elevator support tower yesterday, which killed an elderly woman, was the third major incident at the site, and it came less than a month after a carpenter working near the support tower was crushed to death by a construction elevator cab. In January, a crane arm six stories above the street buckled and fell onto a building across 43d Street, shattering part of that building's glass facade.

[July 22, 1998]

ONE KILLED, 19 HURT AS 5 FLOORS OF OLD BUILDING COLLAPSE

Laborers at Work Demolishing Structure Caught in Crash and Buried in Wreckage. FIREMEN DIG OUT VICTIMS Scores of Beams and Tons of Debris Imprison Two in Cellar for Three Hours. DOCTOR CRAWLS TO AID THEM Mayor at Scene Has Rescuers Lined Up to Give Praise — Negligence Is Charged. ONE KILLED, 19 HURT AS BUILDING FALLS

[March 31, 1923]

SIX MORE BODIES FROM HOTEL RUINS

A Least Fifteen Lives Were Lost in the Darlington. SIX WARRANTS ARE ISSUED Report That the Foundations of the Collapsed Structure Were Laid in Quicksand.

[March 4, 1904]

WAREHOUSE COLLAPES

Two Hurt by Flying Bricks as the Walls Give Way.

            With a roar that sounded like an explosion the front and rear walls of the Independent Warehouse, Inc., on South and Front Streets collapsed at midnight last night, sending forth heavy rolls of newsprints paper.  Two persons were slightly injured by being struck by flying bricks.

[JULY 24, 1927]

200 FIGHT FANS FALL WITH ROOF

Structure Collapses Under Watchers of Carpentier-Levinsky Bout – 15 Badly Hurt.

            Two hundred men and boys who had been unable to obtain entrance to the Carpentier-Levinsky fight were watching the battle last night from the roof of the West Side Scrap Iron Works, 283 West Side Avenue, Jersey City, opposite the ball grounds, when about 10 o’clock, part of the roof collapses, dropping from forty to fifty of the spectators on to jagged pieces of scrap iron more than twenty fee below.

[October 13, 1920]

70 Hurt as Theatre Balcony Falls.

Buenos Aires, Sept. 26 –

Seventy persons were injured when the balcony of a motion picture theater at Goya, Province of Corrientes, collapsed during the performance.  Few of the audience, mostly women and children, were seriously injured.  The columns supporting the balcony gave way, hurling its occupants upon those seated beneath.

[September 27, 1927]

5 KILLED, 9 INJURED AS BUILDING FALLS

Sleeping Roomers Caught in Debris of Collapsed House in Greenwich Village. CRASH AROUSES DISTRICT Woman Proprietor, Knocking at Lodgers' Doors, Is Buried in Wreckage. CRAIN ORDERS ARRESTS Asserts Wrecking of Adjoining Tenements Left the Dwelling in Weakened Condition.

Five persons were killed and nine injured at 6:10 o'clock yesterday morning when a four-story rooming house in Greenwich Village collapsed. With all but two of the persons in the building at the time still asleep, the crash sent them plunging downward amid tons of debris as the structure became a mass of bricks and tangled beams.

[October 3, 1930]

TWO MEN ARRAIGNED BUILDING COLLAPSE

Contractor Held Without Bail in Deaths of Two—Will Get Hearing With Owner Today.

[January 6, 1930]

1 DEAD, 8 IMPRISONED IN BUILDING CRASH

ONE BURIED 6 HOURS

Men Held in West 47th Street Wreck Sustained for Hours by Liquid Food. PRIESTS AID RESCUE WORK Five Toil Heroically to Reach Victim's — Administer Last Rites of Church. RESCUERS IN GRAVE PERIL They Dig and Lift Carefully to Avoid Toppling Shaky Walls — Seven Inquiries Begun. 1 DEAD, 8 IMPRISONED IN BUILDING CRASH

For more than six hours last night firemen, policemen and civilians, including four physicians, in constant peril, worked feverishly to rescue two of eight men who had been caught in tons of debris in the late afternoon in the collapse of the three upper floors of the four-story and attic dwelling at 26 West Forty-seventh Street.

[December 12, 1925]

Warehouse Collapse Buries Fourteen

BOWLING GREEN, Ky., March 30. – Fourteen men were buried in the ruins of the American Tobacco Company’s warehouse when that three-story structure collapsed today under the weight of tobacco on the top floor.

[March 31, 1922]

HALF-RAZED BUILDING FALLS

Five Men Go Down with Ruins at 7th Avenue and 48th Street.

[May 19, 1920]

Eight Killed in Building Collapse.

MONTREAL,  July 13 – Eight Persons were killed and several others injured today by the collapse of the top floor, stored with empty shells, of a warehouse owned by Lymburner, Ltd., munitions manufacturers, in St. Paul Street.  The identified dead included George Lymburner, a nephew of the head of the firm.

[July 14, 1918]

Building Fall Kills 33 in Shanghai.

London, Aug. 9 – Thirty-three Chinese were killed and 150 injured today in the collapse of an open shelter 450 feet long, says a Reuter’s dispatch from Shanghai.  The building had a heavy tiled roof, but had no adequate foundation.  The structure was situated in the Chinese city on the border of the French Concession and was used as a public market.

[August 10, 1927]

4 KILLED, 10 INJURED IN BUILDING CRASH

Workmen Buried Under Tons of Debris in Foundation Pit at 127-29 W. 46th St.

Four men were killed and ten injured yesterday morning at 10:35 o'clock when a temporary structure collapsed when they were at work fifty feet below the street level on the foundation of a building to be erected at 127-129 West Forty-sixth Street, a short distance east of Times Square.

[May 25, 1924]

TWO SMOTHERED IN CELLAR.

Workmen Killed When Walls of Dance Hall's Foundation Collapse.

[October 11, 1919]

PORTUGUESE CASTLE FALLS.

Toppling of Old Moorish Structure Terrorizes Villagers.

[May 18, 1930]

STAGE ROOF FALLS ON COMPANY OF 60

Three Persons, Including a Principal, In 'Song of the Flame,' Badly Hurt at Wilmington. PANIC NARROWLY AVERTED Chorus Continues to Sing and Jack Haskell Calms the Puzzled Audience.

WILMINGTON, Del., Dec. 11. — The roof over the stage of the Playhouse collapsed with a roar during a performance of the "Song of the Flame" by a New York company here tonight, injuring twelve members of the company, three seriously, and wrecking the scenery, lighting system and stage properties.

[December 12, 1925]

12 KNOWN DEAD, OTHERS TRAPPED IN DANCE HALL RUINS

Bodies of a Dozen Victims Are Taken Out of Wreckage of Collapsed Boston Building. TWENTY-FIVE ARE INJURED Three Stories of Debris Cover Floor Containing Dancers, Burying Victims. HALL A CHINATOWN RESORT It Had Recently Been Swept by Fire, and Its Continued Use Starts Investigations.

BOSTON, July 4. — One of the worst disasters in the history of this city occurred early today, when the building occupied by the Pickwick Club, a Chinatown resort at 12 Beach Street, collapsed without warning, carrying a hundred or more merrrymakers down in the ruins.

[July 5, 1925]

[just trying to get your attention, that's Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison, 1968]

JAIL ROOF CAVES IN

BEDLAM FOLLOWS

Forty-four Prisoners, Scared, Yell for an Hour, Thinking Place Was Being Bombed.

ATLANTIC CITY, May 23. — Bedlam broke loose among forty-four prisoners in the Atlantic City jail tonight when nearly six hundred square feet of the roof and skylight of the jail suddenly collapsed and crashed down atop the steel cages with a deafening roar that echoed and re-echoed through police headquarters.

[May 24, 1926]

TWO KILLED, 20 HURT BY FALL OF BUILDING

Tons of Bricks, Mortar and Girders Crash in Philadelphia's Business Centre.

[July 14, 1922]

HIGH SCHOOL BUILDING FALLS AT FLORAL PARK

Fifty Tons of Steel Used in the New Structure Collapses— Inquiry Is Launched.

[AUGUST 5, 1929] 

[just trying to get your attention again, that's Shirley Temple]

Girl is Killed, 38 Other Children Are Hurt When Lobby of Pittsburgh Movie Collapses

PITTSBURGH, Sept. 22 (Assoriated Press).—Fifty school children, most of them less than 12 years old, were massed late today in the lobby of the Strand, a new motion picture theatre in the East Liberty district, awaiting admission to a free show, when the concrete floor cracked form end to end and dropped the little-ones into the basement.

[September 23, 1922]

3 HURT, 30 ESCAPE AS STORES COLLAPSE

Warning Crash Gives Many in Montgomery (Ala.) Buildings a Chance to Flee. WALL FALLS IN EXCAVATION Contractor Asserts Foundation of Structure Which Crashed Is Intact—Inquiry to Start. Flee as Building Crashes. Asserts Foundation Is Intact.

[July 16, 1929]

THREE HOUSES FALL INTO A SUBWAY CUT

WORKER DIES, 1 LOST

RUINS OF BUILDING CRASH IN SUBWAY CUT.

The crack and grinding of rock gave warning of danger at 1:30 o'clock yesterday afternoon to twelve men who were working forty feet below the sidewalk in a subway cut which runs from Fifty-second Street and Eighth Avenue on a curve in a northeasterly direction into Fifty-third street.

[February 17, 1928]

25 BUILDERS BURIED IN PARIS COLLAPSE

Seven of First Twelve Recovered From Wreckage of Vincennes Apartment Are Dead. RESCUERS LABOR ALL NIGHT Six Stories of House Had Been Completed and Ground Floor Was Occupied.

PARIS. Oct. 18.—Twenty-five workmen were buried today in a tangled mass of stone, steel girders and reinforeed concrete when a seven-story apartment building in course of construction at Vincennes, a suburb of Paris, collapsed while builders were in all parts of the edifice.

[October 19, 1925] 

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[1858] The Destruction of Crystal Palace

  Otis, workin' it at the Crystal Palace.