Residents fight to save Art Deco windows as historic Bronx building faces modernization

A group of Marble Hill residents lost the battle to preserve their historic building’s defining architectural feature. But some are still pushing back.

Since 1937, the Caro Building at 135 West 225th St. has stood at the edge of the Harlem River. Known for its orignal Art Deco steel casement windows, it is one of the few remaining structures in the Bronx with this feature. These distinctive side-hinged windows open outward, flooding the interior space with natural light and offering unobstructed, sweeping views of the Hudson River.

On May 14, Chantal McLaughlin was among the dozens of residents surprised by an email from the management company informing residents the windows would be swapped out for modern ones the following day. 

“It was a very brief email,” McLaughlin said. “There was very little detailed information about what that involved. It felt like they sent the email last minute so that people couldn’t organize.”

Horace Ginsbern, the prolific architect behind the Caro Building who pioneered the Art Deco style in the Bronx. He was particularly known for the landmark Fish Building on the Grand Concourse and the Park Place Apartments in Highbridge, the first Art Deco building in the borough.

But what makes the Caro notable is not just its windows, it’s the textured, sawtooth-style bricks zigzagging between them.

“Lots of Art Deco buildings have two or three different colors of brick,” John Howard, a member of the Historic Districts Council’s Bronx Landmarks Commission and the head of the Bronx Art Deco Apartment House Archive, said.  “This one is special because it does everything with the one color of brick and still maintains the interesting patterns.”

Two years ago, preservation advocates applied to earn the Caro a landmark designation, but no decisions have been handed down yet, leaving it vulnerable to alterations without oversight from the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission.

On May 15, the sounds of power tools echoed through the halls as workers began removing the first casement windows. Starting on the upper floors, they sawed each glass door from its metal frame and swapped them for large ones that slid upward instead. McLaughlin could only describe the new windows as “these dark brown, hulking things” that looked “ugly and utilitarian.”

Still, she hoped rallying community support might be the tenant’s best chance to stop the replacement. Even if a few windows were lost, the others could be saved. She launched a Change.org petition titled Save Historic Marble Hill Art Deco Building NYC, and spread the word in Facebook Groups and on Reddit Forums.

As of May 27, the petition garnered 352 signatures.

However, for some residents, the change is bittersweet. Although they feel the replacement windows stripped the building of its hallmark feature, in winter, temperatures inside their apartments plummeted into the low 50s despite running heat. In summer, air conditioners struggled to compensate for poor insulation. 

“It would have been nice if they could have kept the original windows, but I was glad they were doing something about them,” resident Peter Luthy said. “They’re like 100 years old, single panes, so they were pretty leaky.”

Single-panes are known for having poor energy efficiency, with heat gain and heat loss through windows responsible for about 30 percent of residential heating and cooling use, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. 

Local Law 97, also known as the Climate Mobilization Act, is likely driving the overhaul. Established in 2019, it requires buildings of more than 25,000 square feet to establish safeguards to reduce their carbon footprint. 

Although the Caro’s owner, Joseph Grubner, did not respond to a request for comment, in his email to residents he wrote the upgrade was necessary to meet the city’s energy efficiency regulations, adding it wasn’t an easy decision to make “due to the change it will bring to our beautiful Art Deco building.”

Some residents argued Grubner could have taken a different route to satisfy legal requirements by opting for windows similar in style rather than conventional-looking ones.

“The Landmarks Preservation Commission has approved a modern version of the old steel casements, and they could have easily used it here,” Howard said. “It’s really unfortunate, but unless the landlord has a change of heart, I don’t think anything is going to change.”

The steel casement windows are due to be completely replaced in about six weeks.