Most of Bay Ridge was built as houses rather than row blocks, and that changes the job before anyone touches glass. Detached and semi-detached brick and limestone houses here come with side alleys, driveways and garages, which means staging happens on the client’s own property instead of behind a sidewalk shed — a lift can be levelled on a driveway slab, a large insulated unit can be walked up a side alley, and a rear elevation can be reached from the garden rather than through the living room. That access is worth real money on a quote, and it is why a bank of windows on a Bay Ridge house is usually a faster, cleaner job than the same count in a row-house neighbourhood. The flip side is that these houses have been altered constantly for ninety years. Porches have been enclosed, dormers added, kitchens pushed out at the back, and the openings that came with those alterations were framed by whoever was available at the time. We measure every opening on its own rather than assuming a house has four of anything.

The second thing that shapes the work here is the Narrows. Elevations facing the harbour take salt-laden air and sustained wind that inland Brooklyn never sees, and the failures show up in a particular order: fixings corrode, frame finishes chalk and pit, gasket and seal lines give out at the corners, and only then does anyone notice a sealed unit has gone cloudy. On Shore Road and the harbour side of Ridge Boulevard we specify stainless or properly coated fixings, finishes rated for a marine environment, and glazing details that drain rather than hold water, because a unit that would last twenty-five years three blocks inland will not do it on an exposed west elevation. The same exposure makes enclosed sunrooms and glazed porches — a Bay Ridge signature — the thing we are called about most, since a porch is essentially a wall of glass taking weather on three sides.