Removal of small part of wall?
We would like to open up the small room that sits above the vestibule. We’ve seen this is very common in a lot of original designs, but I’m not sure if that wall is load-bearing. I’ve also read that if you take out less than 10 feet of a bearing wall, it’s ok.
Here is an example of what I mean, with the relevant wall section highlighted in red:

felurian
in Renovation 3 weeks ago
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greenwoodgoblin | 1 weeks ago
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Update on the side conversation: We had our structural engineer out today, and made a plan to do a combination of sistering/scabbing and supporting (we have some partitions to build, anyway, so we’ll do them in wood not steel). It’s easy enough work so we will do it ourselves. I will say, any time I want to rail against modern workmanship, I can just go down into my basement and gaze at the 20-some old growth joists that were notched by an inch, right in the middle, to run a new steam pipe in 1950 or so, thus making them effectively two-by-sevens and leading to sag in half the house. I’ll also say that we have a great structural engineer, Anthony Marmo (AFM Inspections), who is good-natured, reasonably priced, and totally non-alarmist. And great with my overly friendly dog. He helps with assessments for renos in Brooklyn and Queens a lot.

Brownstone Home Inspection | 2 weeks ago
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Greenwood and others: if you have sag in your floors and someone went around and repaired cracked plaster (that had resulted) over the past decades, know that to try and lift this will probably damage a lot of plaster and will in some cases pop it off the walls. i am not up for repairing this in my house, so i have opted to leave it and take the easy way out; move.
all of these houses have the same sag around the same stair penetrations. it is the way the double joist along the stairs is supported either in stirrups or in some cases notched into the full length joists running along the end of the stairs and how the tail joists are attached to the double joist. too much play in the individual pieces and i suppose to much unsupported length.
know that even though we have sag, we do not have bounce and that could be in the flooring itself. so sistering in this house will not fix it. if people have “squishy” flooring and do not want to open up from below, there is a way to fix some of this and i have done it here in my house and for others. ask here.
i tend to think you are correct, it will take support. not sistering. sistering is for issues with individual joists not the entire system. and support means down to a footing in the ground, not a column on some boards placed on the rat slab.
i am not really a structural person. most of what i know (i do have college level classes in this stuff but have not done a lot in the field under competent people) comes from listening to structural people or observing what has been done in the past in these houses and how that has worked out.
i would like to know how wide the op’s house is and if they have a girder underneath.

greenwoodgoblin | 2 weeks ago
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This is a great convo. Steve, did you add support to yours? We are in a 20 ft wide without a girder and I think it would do a world of good for us to do something to stabilize the sag and a few bouncy spots — we just recently exposed all the joists (mercifully not termite damaged but with some old notching from running the steam pipes, ugh!) and now’s the time. I have a structural engineer coming Wednesday, in fact, but curious… We were originally just going to sister, but now thinking about support.

Brownstone Home Inspection | 2 weeks ago
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Let me add to this at the risk of confusing readers a little more:
Cate, let me say this first: The “main” beam is generally referred to as a “girder” be it steel in modern construction or wood in these old houses (and the arched brick columns serve the same purpose). Yes, the girder runs perpendicular to the joists (so down the length of most – but not all – of these attached houses). Many of the brownstones were built with them but many older homes were not (and should have had them to prevent floor sag; my twenty-foot wide included) and some girders were added later.
The need for this sort of support (be it a girder or the columns supporting a load-bearing wall) is determined by referencing “joist span” charts which detail the maximum span of specifically sized joists. I had been in a narrow house (less than 20′ wide; like 18’) a few weeks back which appeared to have an originally installed “girder” which I thought very odd given the joist size and width of the house but when I considered that the floors had appeared to have never sagged, i simply thought “this was a well built” house. I regularly go in 20-foot-wide houses that do not have girders or columns. Twenty feet wide is generally accepted as the maximum width the largest joists can safely span without needed support from a “load-bearing” wall and a girder or columns and footings in the basement. In some of the most demanding applications, we sometimes see 3×10 or 3×12 joists (I saw them in an unsupported commercial roof structure in Brooklyn a year ago).
At the risk that accompanies differing with a licensed professional, readers should know that when we deal with buildings, we know we can never really be certain about anything without looking at actual site conditions (most of us learn this the hard way, me included). In this case, because I suspect this house to be a typical brownstone and I would bet it has some original support (girder or columns) in the basement (making me think the designers intended that wall to be load-bearing), I would tend to go with Cate and Michael and say it is a load-bearing wall but the possibility still exists that it is not. Consideration would have to be given to the width of the house (joist span), joist sizes, what is sitting above and below, what the original builders “intended” (if that makes sense) and what allowable “live” and “dead” loads were intended on these floors (the modern codified joist spans take into account the dead load of the partition walls). Having a continuous, unbroken wall running from the front of the house to the rear and sitting directly atop a wall below also makes it “look” load-bearing – which I realize is why Cate and Michael say it is one – but that alone is not absolute.
I mention that it might matter what is sitting above. In a modern and wider house, they might have rested the ends of shorter joists for the upper floors (or a flat roof) on a load-bearing wall running down the middle of a house and that would mean that weight must be transferred to footings in the basement. In the case of many of these narrow, older houses, if you go into the cockloft above the top floor and directly under the roof, the roof is unsupported and nothing from the roof rests down on the walls below. The walls just below that kind of roof structure in these houses are known as “partition walls” (as opposed to load-bearing walls which could still be on the floors below the top floor). Narrow houses (less than 20’ wide) all over this city, including mine, have walls built in them that are known as partition walls and they serve no purpose other than to provide privacy from one room to another. If these walls are not supported from below with a girder or columns, they “look” like partition walls and I would probably assume they are but ultimately, I would still defer to a licensed professional before telling someone on this board that they are partition walls.
Now this: a structural contractor who is sometimes on this board once told me that “sometimes we do things in a house that turns a non-load-bearing wall into a load-bearing wall”. I took that to mean adding a bathroom with a lot of mortar on the floor or adding too much weight to a roof supported by joists (on these flat roofs, we call them joists. On standing roofs, we call them rafters) resting on the walls below. That left me thinking “if a wall was never intended and built to be load-bearing, could it ever become a ‘proper’ load-bearing wall?” That was about ten years ago and I am still pondering it.
We can NEVER know the truth without further details of that structure (current drawings of all floors and the cellar) or a site visit (what is in the cellar; a girder or columns?). Without making a site visit and for the purposes of this conversation, Cate and Michael are correct to err on the side of caution and assume it is a load-bearing wall and in some small projects it may be ok to err that way and proceed. But with larger or on-going projects, we (as professionals) have to be careful because it often happens that when someone on a team makes an assumption about one thing on a project, that assumption can become a fact on which everything that follows is based and that might not work for any work that follows (even decades later). In my own house, if I were uncertain, and wanted to open that wall up without knowing what it was and did not care if I needed a permit or not, I would treat it as load-bearing and build a heavier than otherwise necessary header and jack studs and be done with it. I am not suggesting here that anyone should do anything in their own houses without knowing if they need a permit or not.
Never assume anything with a building.
Michael, I hope you will take a look at my webpage. I spent a couple of decades working in professionally managed (older and even historic commercial, mass masonry) buildings in hands-on supervisory and management positions and I was often and am still the guy running around doing investigative work for the architects. I now do a lot of preconstruction investigative work in cellars (I can pretty much tell where all of termite riddled joists will be in a brownstone before I enter it and I am a NYS Licensed Termite Inspector/Technician strictly for this kind of investigative work) and on roofs at the direction or request of architects. I am also a former restoration contractor. I know these houses from top to bottom.
Steve
Brownstonehomeinspection.com

michaelhanson | 3 weeks ago
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Hi, this is a pretty simple and common change to make – – I’m an architect, and have done this several times as part of brownstone renovation projects. As Cate pointed out, however, it is a true structural change – that wall (often referred to as a “relieving wall”) is a load-bearing wall. This change would require some amount of engineering and calculations to be done safely and properly (usually a simple beam & post, like Steve said).
I would note, this definitely requires permit as far as the city is concerned – any structural or load-bearing change needs to be filed and inspected (and any non load-bearing wall to be removed that’s more than 30sf in area -think 5′ wide x 6′ high – needs to be filed, as well).
Good luck! This move is almost never a mistake, especially if you’re doing this along with other work – the “niche” can also be a small office, dressing space, or a bed niche, like the pic you added. If you need an architect, feel free to reach out.

cate | 3 weeks ago
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The wall separating the small room from the adjacent large room is load bearing. In the cellar, this is where the main beam is. The beams on every floor above it are load bearing. The beams that run in the other direction are thought by some architects to be “strengthening;” however, the last beam in the rear is unquestionably load bearing, remove that and the rear of the house and back wall will start sinking and rippling. FYI it is common in single-family houses, particularly in the Italianate period, but also in later ones, to have this room be a “niche” in the “best” bedroom. Posts on either side hold up the opening, usually with decorative brackets and such in the corners.

Brownstone Home Inspection | 3 weeks ago
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The question you are asking on here is really only for a licensed architect. I can tell you that there will be structural contractors out there who have done so much of this work in these houses that they will know very quickly. I can tell you some other things:
Generally there are 20′ wide houses that do not need load bearing walls and or girders running down them. I mean they were built this way but often girders were added later. Twenty five foot wides are another matter;
If you go to your cellar and there is a massive girder on posts and footings that looks original or there is a brick wall with arches in it, this is more than likely a load bearing wall and it will be under the wall you highlight;
If it is determined that this is a load bearing wall and an architect says it can be done this way, you can probably make a double 2x (10,12) header with jack studs supporting it to open that up.
I am not an architect nor do i have a lot of experience with structural elements. An architect must be consulted. I also have a good contractor who can advise you.
I am a licensed home inspector and building maintenance consultant and a haage certified roof inspector and do offer roof and envelop water intrusion investigation services. I also coach homeowners should they like to perform their own all around maintenance, including on flat roofs (its easy). I offer inspections for new homeowners who need to be brought up to speed and off pre project consultation. I have been training staff and managing projects in professional settings since 1990 and in industry since 1981.
Steve
Brownstonehomeinspection.com