FDNY

Beyond firefighting, the Fire Department is a regulator whose paper trail touches most substantial buildings: it inspects premises for fire-code compliance, issues permits for regulated activities and storage, and certifies the people and systems that fire safety depends on — certificates of fitness for individuals, inspections and tests for alarms, sprinklers, standpipes, and other systems.

In records, FDNY items — violations, orders, permit status — read as a building's fire-safety compliance trail, parallel to the Department of Buildings' structural one. For certain uses (assembly spaces, fuel storage, laboratories), FDNY requirements shape feasibility as surely as zoning does, and open fire-code violations belong on the same diligence list as open building violations.