How high is the Trump Wall? A guide for New Yorkers

OK, the President claims that the wall will be 60 feet high. If I had to bet, I would bet that it is not going to be built, but who knows? If I were in Congress, I would vote for the boondoggle in exchange for leaving Obamacare alone. 

Still, how tall is sixty feet? It is not a height that you would normally reference. So I am here to tell you! A “standard” six-story NYC new law tenement rises about 66 feet. (I lived in one for a few years as a teenager, a building completed in 1910.) The below picture shows my boy (in the blue jacket) playing jump rope in front of a row of new law tenements in Manhattan. 

The proposed wall would be about six feet shorter than the row of buildings in the middle of the picture. Here is another view of similarly-sized structures:

Just imagine that this was South Texas and those buildings were the wall! Easy.

Of course, the President has also said that he wants the wall to be eighty feet tall. That would make it the height of the building with the watertower in the background (77 feet) of this picture from last May:

And now you know! I will admit that if we are going to blow billions on a pointless monument across the southern border, I kind of hope we go all out and build it eighty feet tall. Our grandchildren in the 2060s will zip over it in their flying cars and marvel at our folly. If you are gonna be stupid, be impressively stupid! 

ADDENDUM: And expensive! For those of you who want an idea of the cost, a good calculator is here. An 80-foot high 18-inch thick barrier built over a little more than half the border (1,000 miles) clocks in around $28 billion. Another calculator, which uses higher cost assumptions, gives $45 billion.

Comments

[Peter Rosa]

My reasoned judgment is that the chances that the wall will be built are somewhat lower than nonexistent.

[Matt McIrvin]

60 feet is the approximate height of the Yankee Cannonball, the 1930s wooden roller coaster at Canobie Lake Park. That's what I'd probably use as a mental point of comparison.

There are two steel coasters there that go up about 72-73 feet; that's as tall as they can go because of fairly strict zoning regulations.

Things that are hundreds of feet tall, I reflexively compare with the Washington Monument.

[Bruce A Munro]

Still might do it. $45 billion, that's a lot of pork to spread around. Worrying about costs is for losers and Democrats.

[Matt McIrvin]

In practical terms, it's nothing but a pure waste of money--I suppose it might function as a mild Keynesian stimulus if the construction happens through the next recession. In symbolic terms, it's everything wrong and un-American (in a normative sense).