Main entrance systems for residential and mixed-use buildings
A building entrance carries a different set of demands from any other door on the project. It is the security boundary, it is the first thing residents and visitors see, and it cycles constantly — often with people carrying things, which means it gets pushed rather than opened.
Most entrances in the NYC area are vestibule arrangements: an outer door, a small lobby, an inner door. That configuration exists for a reason. It creates an air lock that cuts heating loss and wind entering the lobby, and it gives somewhere for packages and intercom equipment to live that is neither fully outside nor past the security line.
Access control usually drives the hardware. Once you introduce an intercom, fob reader or automatic operator, the door has to be prepped for power and the locking has to fail in the direction the fire code requires — which for egress doors means failing unlocked.
Building entrances are almost always egress doors, and egress doors must open from the inside with a single motion and no key, no matter what the access control is doing. Retrofits get this wrong regularly — a maglock is added for security and the door quietly becomes non-compliant.
Any locking we specify releases on exit. Where a project genuinely needs delayed egress or a controlled exit, that is a specific code path with its own requirements, not something to improvise with hardware.
The outer door of a vestibule takes the full weather load and is often at the base of a facade where water collects. Sill pan flashing with end dams is essential, and the threshold has to be set so the level entry required for accessibility does not become a water entry point.
We tie the frame perimeter into the building's air and water barrier using Henry Blue Skin or Soprema membranes and Dow Corning sealants, depending on the substrate.
Commercial Doors Storefront Doors Frameless Entrance Doors Door Hardware & Locks Laminated Glass Curtain Wall Systems
An apartment building entrance is used by every resident several times a day, by deliveries, by visitors and by contractors. It has to secure the building, meet egress requirements, be accessible, close and latch reliably every time, and take a great deal more abuse than a house door.
Those requirements pull against each other, which is why entrance doors are the most commonly mis-specified item we replace.
A building entrance that does not latch reliably is a security failure, not an inconvenience. The usual causes are consistent.
The closer is undersized for the leaf or for the wind exposure, so the door drifts shut without engaging. The hinges have dropped, so the latch no longer aligns with the keeper — which is why offset pivots carrying the weight into the floor and head outlast butt hinges on a high-cycle door. Or the door is propped, usually because it is too heavy to open comfortably, which is itself a specification failure.
That last one is worth dwelling on. A door that is hard to open gets propped open, and a propped door secures nothing. Getting the closer and the leaf weight right is a security measure as much as a convenience.
Glazing in a building entrance should be laminated rather than monolithic tempered. A tempered pane failing leaves the entrance completely open; laminated glass cracks and stays in the frame, and an intruder has to keep working at the same spot.
Access control — intercom, card reader, keypad, fob — has to be integrated into the door and frame, and any electric lock must release on power failure and on the fire alarm with a manual release on the egress side. That is a life-safety requirement and it belongs in the coordination before fabrication, not afterwards.
A double-door vestibule is worth the space where it can be had. It buffers wind so the outer closer is not fighting pressure directly, it keeps weather out of the lobby, it cuts heat loss substantially, and it gives somewhere sensible for the intercom panel and for deliveries to wait.
On an exposed corner entrance, a vestibule is often the difference between a door that works and a door that is a constant complaint.
Entrance doors are subject to limits on opening force and on threshold height and bevel. On an exposed entrance those limits and the need to latch against wind are in direct conflict, and the usual resolutions are a vestibule or a power operator.
A power operator is also increasingly expected on residential entrances regardless, and retrofitting one later means returning to the frame and the electrics, so it is cheaper to decide at the outset.
These describe the kind of work each area brings rather than any specific client project.
Pre-war apartment buildings — the Bronx, upper Manhattan, central Brooklyn, Ocean Avenue. Original entrances in masonry openings, frequently with a vestibule already there. Replacement usually means matching an existing opening rather than changing it, and the hardware specification has to carry a high cycle count.
Landmarked frontage — Park Slope, Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn Heights, Harlem. The entrance is part of what the historic district review protects, so the profile, the finish and the glazing pattern follow the approval rather than preference.
New residential — Long Island City, Downtown Brooklyn, Greenpoint. Glass and aluminium entrances with integrated access control and power operators, coordinated with the lobby design and the security system from the start.
Post-war stock — Co-op City, Riverdale, Bay Ridge, Forest Hills. Replacement programmes where board approval and matching across multiple entrances shape the specification as much as performance does.
Tell us the opening size, how many units the entrance serves, which way it faces and what access control is planned. We supply and install across Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx and Staten Island, and throughout Northern New Jersey, the Jersey Shore, Philadelphia and the Lehigh Valley.
Tell us about the opening and we will specify it for you.
