Masonry & Facade Restoration Contractor
We’re a masonry restoration contractor based in Staten Island, working on apartment buildings, schools and commercial property across the five boroughs. We repoint, rebuild and waterproof failing brick and stone. A good share of it is FISP work: closing out the conditions on a facade report so the sidewalk shed can finally come down.
Most buildings in this city are masonry, and most of them are old. Brick and stone move. They take on water, and after enough winters the mortar gives out. Restoration is the work of putting that wall back together: cutting out the dead mortar and repointing with a mix that suits the original, replacing brick that has spalled or worked loose, rebuilding parapets that have gone out of plumb, swapping the rusted lintels that are lifting the brick above your windows. Then there is the part owners tend to forget about. Flashing, sealant, coping. If water can still find its way in, none of the rest of it lasts.
This isn’t a cosmetic pointing job. How deep you cut, whether a lintel gets replaced or just coated, whether a bulging wythe comes down or gets anchored back: those calls decide whether the repair holds for thirty years or fails in three. On a six-story walk-up in Brooklyn, or a school building in Staten Island, getting them wrong is expensive. That judgment is most of what you are paying a masonry contractor for, and it is why we take the complicated jobs instead of small handyman work.
We work with owners, boards and managing agents, and with the engineers who write the scope. Hand us a stamped set of drawings and we will build to it. Or walk the building with us and we will tell you what we see.
Everything below is work our own crews do. Most projects need several of them at once.
Open mortar joints are how most water gets into a masonry wall. We cut back to sound mortar at the right depth, clear the joint out, and repoint with a mix matched to the original. On pre-war and landmark buildings that usually means lime mortar. Put a hard modern portland mix on soft historic brick and the brick becomes the sacrificial material instead of the mortar, which is one of the quickest ways to wreck a facade. We see it more often than we would like.
Brick that has spalled, cracked or worked loose gets cut out and replaced with units matched for size and color. Where a wall is bulging or has lost its bond to the backup, we take it down in controlled sections and rebuild with new ties and anchors. Patching over a structural problem only moves it somewhere else.
A parapet takes weather on both faces, which is why it shows up as an unsafe condition on facade reports more than anything else. We rebuild parapets that are leaning, cracked or open at the joints, reset or replace the coping, and put in proper through-wall flashing and anchorage. The point is a wall that passes the next inspection rather than causing one.
Steel lintels rust, and rusting steel swells. That is what lifts the brick above your windows and leaves the stair-step crack you have probably been looking at for a while. We shore the opening, pull the failed lintel, set new galvanized or coated steel with proper bearing and flashing, then rebuild the brick around it. Worn sills and copings get replaced with units pitched and drip-edged so water sheds away from the wall instead of into it.
Stone asks for a different approach than brick. Depending on what we find, that means Dutchman repairs, patching with a color-matched mortar, resetting stones that have shifted, or replacing units too far gone to save. We also do stoops, entryways and cornices, which take more abuse than anything else on a row house.
We sound the wall, cut the drummy and delaminated stucco back to solid substrate, and rebuild it in proper coats. Then we deal with whatever caused it, which is usually substrate movement or a water path nobody addressed the first time around. The finish gets matched to the existing texture.
Restoration without water management is a temporary repair. We replace failed perimeter and joint sealants, repair through-wall and window flashing, and sort out the roof-to-wall and coping details. Where a breathable water repellent makes sense, we will use one. Keeping water out of the assembly is what makes the masonry work last.
Spalling balconies, slab edges, terraces and garage decks get chipped back past the corrosion, the reinforcement cleaned or replaced, and the section rebuilt with repair mortar or placed concrete. Anything load-bearing we coordinate with the engineer of record and file properly.
Soiling, carbon staining, efflorescence, graffiti, and old elastomeric coatings that are sealing moisture into the wall. We use the gentlest method that actually works, starting with low-pressure water and going further only if we have to. Test panels first, always. Aggressive cleaning on soft historic masonry does damage you cannot undo.
Chimneys and bulkheads are exposed on every face, so they tend to fail first. We rebuild them, replace crowns and caps, reline where it is needed, and repair the flashing and counterflashing where they meet the roof.
Most large masonry jobs in this city start with a piece of paper. Under the Facade Inspection Safety Program, which owners still call Local Law 11, any building over six stories has to have its exterior walls inspected on a recurring cycle by a Qualified Exterior Wall Inspector, with the report filed at the Department of Buildings.
That report puts your facade into one of three categories, and each one starts a different clock.
This is where most of our work comes from. You hand us the report and we turn it into finished repairs: parapets rebuilt, lintels replaced, wall sections repointed, new coping and flashing, plus the photo documentation your inspector needs to amend the filing. If there is already a shed on the sidewalk, we schedule the shed-critical items first. On a job that drags, the shed rental and permits often end up costing more than the masonry did.
We also pick up the compliance work that lands next to it: parapet observation findings on smaller buildings, DOB and ECB violations tied to the facade or the sidewalk, and repairs that a shed permit is waiting on.
Cycles, deadlines and penalty amounts change. We check the current requirements with the DOB before scoping any compliance job. And if what you actually need is an inspector rather than a contractor, we will say so.
We are set up for work that needs real crews and real supervision. Smaller jobs we will look at depending on scope.
We walk the building and read whatever report or scope you already have, looking for what is causing the failure rather than only what shows.
A written scope and price, line by line, with quantities and exclusions spelled out. It should let a board compare bids on the same basis.
Work permits pulled, and DOB filings coordinated with your design professional where they are needed. All of it before anyone starts.
Pipe scaffold, swing stage or sidewalk shed, whichever the building and scope call for, set up so the property keeps running.
Supervised crews, mockups where color and texture have to match, and photographs taken as we go.
Final walkthrough, a documentation package for your inspector or board, permits closed out, and the protection down as soon as we are allowed to take it down.
We are based in Staten Island and work across the five boroughs and the counties around them.
Our home borough. We know the building stock here: row houses and brownstones, apartment buildings, the commercial properties along Hylan Boulevard and Forest Avenue, and public schools from St. George down to Tottenville. We also know what the water does to an exposed elevation out here. Salt and freeze-thaw take a real toll close to the shore.
Brownstone and row-house work, pre-war walk-ups, mid-rise apartment buildings. Brooklyn usually means soft historic brick and brownstone, so lime mortar and Dutchman repairs rather than modern patching. In a landmark district there are limits on materials and methods as well, and we work inside them.
FISP-driven work on elevator buildings, co-ops and commercial property. In Manhattan the access, the sidewalk protection and keeping an occupied building running are as much of the job as the masonry is.
Apartment buildings, mixed-use property, garden complexes and institutions. A lot of Queens is mid-century masonry that has reached the age where the lintels, parapets and coping all start going at once.
Pre-war apartment buildings and institutional property, usually with years of deferred exterior maintenance behind them. The scope is normally parapets, lintels and full-elevation repointing.
Twenty years of hands-on restoration on commercial, institutional and multi-unit residential buildings around the city.
We do the repairs that close out facade report conditions and bring sheds down, with the documentation your inspector and your board need.
Public school and institutional work, where the scheduling, safety and compliance requirements are strictest.
An itemized proposal that says what we are doing and what we are not. You should be comparing bids, not guessing.
Mortar, brick and stone matched to the original assembly. That is the difference between a repair that lasts and one that speeds up the damage.
From access and demolition through to the final finishes, we run the project instead of handing you a stack of subcontractors.
The common signals are cracked or missing mortar joints, stair-step cracking above windows and doors, spalling or flaking brick faces, white efflorescence staining, bulging or out-of-plane wall sections, leaning parapets, loose or displaced coping stones, and interior water staining on the top floor or at window perimeters. Any of those on a New York City building is worth a look. A leaning parapet or loose coping over a sidewalk is worth a call today, not next spring.
Usually because they are not bidding the same work. Cut depth on the repointing, what mortar is specified, how much brick is actually priced for replacement, whether the lintels get replaced or just coated, whether the parapet is repointed or rebuilt, what access is included, whether permits are in there at all. Change any one of those and the number moves a lot. A low bid is normally a smaller scope rather than a better price for the same job. Ask everyone for a line-item breakdown and compare those instead of the totals.
Repointing deals with the mortar joints and nothing else. Restoration treats the wall as a system: the joints, the brick itself, lintels, parapets, coping, flashing, and whatever water path is behind the damage. If the real problem is a rusting lintel or a failed coping, repointing is money spent on the symptom. The new mortar will fail on the same schedule the old mortar did.
It depends on the scope. Small in-kind repairs often do not need one. Structural work, parapet rebuilding, lintel replacement, or anything needing a shed or a swing stage generally does. Landmark buildings and landmark districts carry extra review on top. We confirm what is required with the DOB before starting and handle the filing coordination as part of the job.
April through November is the reliable window. Mortar needs temperatures consistently above about 40°F to cure properly. You can work in the cold with heat, enclosures and admixtures, but it costs more and takes more control to get right. Everyone in this trade fills up in spring for that reason. If you have a report deadline or a shed on the sidewalk, book early.
Exterior walls are almost always common elements, so the building pays rather than the individual shareholder or unit owner. That means the co-op corporation or the condo association, funded out of reserves, an assessment or a capital loan. Terraces, balconies and windows are the usual exceptions and turn on your governing documents. Have your managing agent or counsel confirm it against your own offering plan and bylaws.
A single-elevation repointing and localized repair on a mid-size building is typically a few weeks. A full-building FISP remediation with parapet reconstruction, lintel replacement, and multiple elevations commonly runs several months, driven as much by access setup, permits, and weather as by the masonry itself. We give a schedule with the proposal and flag the items most likely to move it.
It is one of the main reasons owners call us. The shed comes down once the unsafe conditions have been repaired, your inspector has been back, and the filing has been amended. We sequence the work to clear those conditions as early as the scope allows and get your inspector the documentation they need. Every extra month of shed rental is money that buys you nothing.
All five boroughs, plus Nassau, Westchester and Rockland Counties, and central and northern New Jersey.
Our focus is larger work: multi-unit, commercial, institutional and school buildings. We will still look at smaller residential jobs depending on scope, particularly brownstone and row-house restoration or stoop work, where the job needs real masonry judgment rather than a patch.
Fill in the form below or call us at (347) 216-7096. If you have a facade report, an engineer’s scope or a violation notice, send it along. It makes the first conversation a lot more useful.
Call us or send the details over. We handle the exterior work that needs real experience behind it.
