Window & Door Repair in Douglaston, NY

Douglaston Hill is the smaller of the two districts. The Commission’s 2004 report counts thirty-one wood frame houses there, built largely between 1890 and 1930, around 43rd Avenue and 240th Street. It speaks of clapboard, shingle and spacious porches.

A deep porch shelters the windows under it. The windows just above its roof get the opposite. Rain lands on the porch roof and bounces up onto their sills, and snow can lie against the lower sash for days. On a porch house, those upstairs sills may wear sooner than any others.

From the yard, study that row and then the sills to either side of it. Paint gone grey, or grain standing open, over the porch only, says the roof below is doing it. Mended and painted, that row is still the builder’s own, and it comes out of the work handsomer than it went in.

Inside either district, the City’s Landmarks Law has an owner get a permit from the Commission before work that affects the outside of the house. The Commission’s Discover NYC Landmarks map lets you search for your building and see whether it stands in one. The guidebook sends owners there.

The same guidebook says maintenance and repairs to historic windows do not require a permit if certain criteria are met. Its examples include new glass in a pane, new screens, hinges, locks and pulley chains repaired or replaced, and wood parts patched or partly rebuilt. Where rot has set in, it advises cutting back to solid wood and fitting a matching patch, which it calls a Dutchman. That is the kind of repair we favor too.

The guidebook does not replace the Commission’s rules, and it tells an owner who is unsure to contact the Commission. The Department of Buildings is a separate City office. Its rule on minor work may exempt a window swapped in its existing opening, under four conditions. A required fire-rated window still needs the permit. That rule leaves an owner’s duty to the Commission in place. Two offices, two questions: ask each one its own.