Fort Greene · Brooklyn Neighborhood
Glass & Glazing Services in Fort Greene, Brooklyn
NYC All Glass works the whole range of Fort Greene in a single week: mansard dormers on the hillside brownstone blocks, display panes on Myrtle and DeKalb, and window-wall units in the towers that have gone up around the BAM Cultural District. The survey, the fabrication and the installation are all handled by our own crew, so nobody hands your job to a stranger halfway through.
Fort Greene Glass Company
Glazing for Fort Greene’s Mansards, Shopfronts & New Towers
Fort Greene packs more kinds of glazing into twenty-odd blocks than almost anywhere else in Brooklyn. The streets around Washington Park, South Portland Avenue and Carlton are Italianate and Second Empire row houses, and a large share of them carry mansard roofs with dormer windows set in slate and sheet metal rather than brick. Reglazing a mansard dormer is as much roofing as it is glass work: the sash sits in a timber frame behind metal flashing, the surround has usually been re-roofed two or three times since the house was built, and no two dormers on a block measure the same by the time you get a tape on them. We template every opening individually, carry the sash out through the top-floor room rather than off a roof edge, and reseal the flashing we disturb on the way back in. Lower down the hill, the same houses give us deep areaways, high-stoop parlour sash and rear extensions where a leaking skylight is the reason we were called in the first place.
Then there is the commercial and institutional half of the neighbourhood, which works on a completely different clock. Myrtle Avenue and DeKalb Avenue are strips of small shopfronts in the ground floors of older mixed-use buildings, where display glass takes a beating from traffic, deliveries and the occasional break-in, and where the owner needs the shop trading again tomorrow morning rather than next week. For those we board up the same day and come back with a measured tempered or laminated panel. At the Flatbush and Ashland edge, the picture changes again: the residential towers of the BAM Cultural District and the converted landmark at One Hanson Place mean curtain-wall and window-wall units, freight elevators that have to be booked, insurance certificates filed with management before a crew is let upstairs, and work scheduled around what is on stage that evening. We quote all three of these as Fort Greene work because they are, and we keep the access requirements in the quote rather than discovering them on install day.
Fort Greene Services
Glass Systems for Fort Greene Properties
A cracked dormer light on South Portland Avenue, a smashed display pane on Myrtle, a balcony panel twenty-four floors up on Ashland Place — nearly everything we are called for in Fort Greene sits in one of these six service lines.
Where We Work in Fort Greene
Property Types We Serve
Four building types account for most of our Fort Greene calendar, and each one sets its own rules about access, approvals and what glass is actually allowed in the opening.
Fort Greene Glass FAQs
Before Your Project Begins
Do I need Landmarks approval to replace windows on my Fort Greene brownstone?
Most of the blocks between Fort Greene Park and Fulton Street sit inside the Fort Greene Historic District, so anything visible from the street — front sash, stoop and areaway glass, and mansard dormers in particular — falls under the Landmarks Preservation Commission. Rear elevations and interior glass usually do not. We survey the house first and tell you which of your openings are in scope before you order anything, and we spec to what actually gets approved rather than to the cheapest unit on the shelf. The Commission is the final word, so confirm the scope with them or with your architect.
Can you reglaze a mansard dormer without opening up the roof?
In most cases, yes. We work from inside the top-floor room, take the sash out through the opening, and only disturb the flashing immediately around the frame. What we will not do is guess the size: dormers on these houses have been re-roofed and re-trimmed over a hundred and fifty years and they are routinely out of square by half an inch or more, so each one is templated on site and the glass is cut to that template. If the timber behind the flashing has gone soft — which we find often enough to mention — we will tell you before the glass is ordered rather than after.
How quickly can you board up a broken shopfront on Myrtle Avenue?
Call 718-758-5515 and we will usually have a board-up on site the same day, often within a few hours, so the shop is secure and can keep trading. Measuring happens at the board-up visit, the permanent panel is fabricated to that measurement, and the swap is typically a few days later and takes under an hour. For a display opening we will normally recommend tempered or laminated glass rather than annealed, and laminated if the pane has been broken more than once.
Can you work in a BAM-district tower at the weekend or after hours?
Yes, and for most of those buildings it is the only way the work gets done. We file the insurance certificates management asks for, book the freight elevator and the loading dock in advance, and set the install window around what is on stage nearby and around the building’s own quiet hours. Tell us the managing agent when you call and we will deal with their paperwork directly instead of leaving it with you.