Scope of Work
Germantown High School closed in 2013 after 99 years, and its buildings on the block between Germantown Avenue, High Street and Haines Street are being converted into apartments. 60 East Haines Street is the school’s brick industrial building on the Haines Street side. Turning a school into housing changes what every opening has to do: classrooms and workshops with large institutional windows become apartments that need ventilation in each room, while stair towers and corridors become common areas that need daylight but no operable sash. Alex GC provided a thermally broken aluminium window wall for the building, fixed in the common areas and with double-hung windows in the apartments.
Fixed window wall in the common areas
The stair and circulation tower between the two brick wings is glazed with a stack of window-wall bays, one per floor, each three modules wide. Every bay is a grid of horizontal fixed lites with a row of solid panels at the top and another at the bottom, so the glass sits at eye level on each landing and the floor edges stay hidden behind the panels. Nothing opens here by design: fixed glazing is simpler to keep weathertight, needs no hardware to maintain in a shared space, and gives the stair full daylight.
Double-hung windows in the apartments
The former ground-floor openings in the brick are wide, wider than a single residential window. Each is filled with one framed unit: a double-hung in the middle for ventilation, fixed lites alongside it, and a band of insulated panels below the sill where the old opening ran lower than an apartment window should. A double-hung suits ground-floor apartments on a walkway because the sashes slide within the frame — nothing swings out into the path, and insect screens sit on the outside.
Why a thermally broken system
A school’s old single-glazed windows are one of the biggest energy losses in a conversion, and heating is now each resident’s bill. A thermally broken frame separates the inner and outer aluminium with an insulating barrier, which cuts heat loss through the metal and reduces condensation on the room side in a Philadelphia winter. Using one aluminium system for both the fixed bays and the operable apartment windows keeps the sightlines and the clear anodized finish consistent across the whole building. See aluminium windows for the systems we supply.
Under construction
The photographs were taken in October 2024 with the work still in progress: labels and protective film are on some of the glass, and trades are still on site.
Photographs
Photographed in October 2024, during the conversion.
Similar Work and Related Specifications
Fixed Windows · Double-Hung Windows · Aluminium Windows · Low-E Glass · 1209 Vine Street, Philadelphia · Ansonia Court factory conversion · The Elston, Bronx
Planning Something Similar?
Converting a school, factory or office building to apartments? Send the window schedule or elevations and we will propose a window wall with the right mix of fixed and operable units, and quote it.