COMMERCIAL
FACADE RESTORATION
IN HOUSTON, TX.
Half the buildings in Houston's Main Street Market Square historic district date from 1858 through 1900, and the rest were standing by 1935. Many of their storefronts were changed in the 1950s and 1960s to large plate-glass windows in aluminum frames, so the ground floor and the wall above it come from two different building eras. Facade work downtown is scoped around that seam.
What Commercial Facade Restoration Includes
Every item below is scoped against the building's alteration history. On most older Houston commercial exteriors at least one layer of the wall arrived decades after the rest of it.
Facade Assessment & Diagnosis
What can be priced depends on what the survey can reach. Griffin works each elevation from grade to parapet and records open mortar joints, spalled or displaced units, corrosion staining at embedded steel, failed perimeter sealant, and coating breakdown, with photographs tied to a drawing of that elevation. The ranking that follows puts falling-hazard and active-leak items ahead of work that belongs in next year's capital plan.
Houston counts 23 historic districts, 305 landmarks, and 213 protected landmarks as of January 2026. On a downtown or near-downtown commercial property, designation status gets settled while the survey is still in the field, because it decides whether a recommended repair is a maintenance item or a submittal.
Masonry & Stone Facade Repair
Brick, stone, and cast masonry repairs are compatibility problems first. Repointing mortar is matched to the existing material for strength, color, and joint tooling so the new work does not become the hard spot that cracks the unit beside it. Deteriorated units are cut out and replaced or patched with a dutchman, and cracks are treated according to what is moving them rather than filled on sight.
On older Houston masonry the cleaning starts with water at the lowest pressure that works and escalates only when that fails. The city's Heights design guidance recommends low-pressure water washing for historic materials, warns against abrasive cleaning, and calls for mild chemicals to be tested in an inconspicuous location before broad use. A soiled wall and a failing wall look alike from the sidewalk. The test patch tells them apart, and it goes where the public does not read the building.
Panel & Cladding Restoration
Cladding is the part of a facade estimate most likely to move after mobilization. Fastener corrosion, adhesive failure under an EIFS base coat, and a cavity blocked with old mortar stay invisible behind an intact face, so exploratory openings are priced as their own line and quantities are revisited once the assembly is open. What goes back is decided by the attachment and the drainage behind it rather than by the condition of the panel face.
Many storefronts on Houston's oldest commercial blocks were changed in the 1950s and 1960s to large plate-glass windows in aluminum frames. That leaves a mid-century plate-glass storefront set inside a masonry opening built decades earlier, with an anchorage and a perimeter joint absorbing the difference between them. Panel, frame, and anchorage repairs at the ground floor are detailed together with the masonry jamb and head they bear on.
Protective Coating & Sealant Systems
A joint-by-joint sealant schedule earns more on a commercial exterior than a coating selection does. Each joint is recorded with its geometry, its expected movement, the substrate on either side, and what the previous sealant failed against. Breathable masonry sealers, elastomeric coatings, and anti-graffiti systems are then reviewed for adhesion, vapor permeability, and appearance on a cleaned test area before any elevation is committed to one.
Houston's landmark documentation describes the city's International Style buildings as concrete, steel beams, plate glass, slab doors, and metal window frames, often with flat roofs and horizontal window bands on the low-rise examples. Sealant work on that generation collects in three places: where metal meets glass, where exposed concrete takes weather with nothing over it, and where a flat roof turns up into a wall. Those conditions are what we budget joint footage against on a mid-century Houston elevation.
Industries We Serve in Houston
Houston's Downtown Storefronts Are Younger Than the Walls They Sit In
Main Street Market Square holds 52 buildings plus civic infrastructure, about half of them dating from 1858 through 1900 and the rest from 1901 through 1935. That is a contiguous run of commercial fronts built to the lot line and sharing party walls, with little between one elevation and the next but the sidewalk in front of it. A property team scoping one building there is also scoping the sidewalk in front of it and the party wall behind it, and the schedule bends around both as much as around the repair.
Houston was working in aluminum and glass at full scale in the same years those storefronts changed. A City of Houston landmark report identifies the 1956 Bank of the Southwest Building as Houston's first aluminum curtain wall and the 1960 First City National Bank Building as an early abstract skyscraper with floor-to-ceiling windows recessed behind a protective concrete exoskeleton. The shopfront conversions on older blocks are the small end of that same shift. Ground-floor aluminum is a designed system carrying its own gaskets, anchors, and drainage path, and it should be surveyed on those terms before it is folded into a masonry scope.
Alteration history also decides the approval path. Houston draws its Certificate of Appropriateness line at exterior alteration on a city-designated landmark, a protected landmark, or a property inside a city-designated historic district, and the test is whether a repair leaves the exterior feature the way it found it. A replacement can still clear administratively when the new material matches closely enough what it replaces, which makes it a documentation problem long before it is a procurement one. Measure the existing unit, record its profile and joint tooling, and photograph what justifies replacing it while the wall is still in front of you.
They went up between 1858 and 1935 and were altered on separate schedules, so two adjoining elevations on one block can call for different mortar, different cleaning, and different access.
Designation is common enough in Houston that a property's status belongs in the survey notes rather than in a change order raised after the scope is priced.
Each one raises the same question before a unit is replaced: can the existing size, shape, material, and pattern be matched closely enough for administrative review?
Why Choose Griffin Restoration
Commercial exterior restoration since 2000
Licensed in TX, OK, AR, and LA
56' and 72' — self-performing capability
Full coverage for commercial projects
Commercial Facade Restoration FAQ — Houston, TX
What does commercial facade restoration cover on an older downtown Houston building?
The wall, the openings in it, and everything that has been added to them since. That means masonry and stone, storefront and glazing perimeters, panels and their attachments, sealant joints, parapets and copings, and the coatings over any of it. On a block like Main Street Market Square, where 52 buildings went up between 1858 and 1935, the survey also has to record the alterations: an opening that was widened, a sill replaced in a different material, a lintel covered rather than repaired. Repair documents then reference Houston's current code package, adopted with the 2021 construction codes effective January 1, 2024, wherever an existing assembly is opened or altered. What the owner receives is a scope organized by elevation and by priority rather than a single lump figure.
Our storefront was replaced in the 1960s. Does that change the facade scope?
It almost always does, usually by adding a line item that was never budgeted. Houston's account of its oldest commercial district notes that many storefronts were changed in the 1950s and 1960s to large plate-glass windows in aluminum frames, which leaves a mid-century assembly set inside a masonry opening built decades before it. The two sides of that perimeter move at different rates, take different sealants, and fail in different ways: the masonry loses mortar and sheds units, the aluminum loses gasket, anchorage, and drainage. We survey the frame, the surrounding masonry, and the joint between them as three separate quantities. Where water is showing up inside at the ground floor, the first question is whether it is running behind the frame or behind the wall, because the answer decides which trade owns the repair.
How should a Houston masonry facade be cleaned?
The cleaning should be gentle, and no harder than a test patch proves necessary. The city's Heights design guidance recommends low-pressure water washing for historic materials, warns against abrasive cleaning, and calls for mild chemicals to be tested in an inconspicuous location before broad use. Abrasive methods take off the fired skin of a brick and the tooled surface of stone, and that loss is permanent: absorption goes up, and the next repair cycle arrives sooner. Our sequence is water at the lowest effective pressure, then a mild chemical only where soiling justifies one, each proved on a patch a passerby will never read. Cleaning response is recorded with the rest of the survey, so a later sealer or coating decision is made against a substrate whose behavior is already known.
Does a facade repair on a designated Houston property need a Certificate of Appropriateness?
That turns on what the repair changes rather than on how large it is. Houston requires a Certificate of Appropriateness for exterior alterations to a city-designated landmark, a protected landmark, or a property in a city-designated historic district, and ordinary maintenance stays outside that definition only while it leaves an exterior feature's design, character, texture, and material alone. Preservation guidance also allows administrative review when material damaged beyond repair is replaced with a match for size, shape, material, and pattern. Documentation is the lever there: a repointing detail that reproduces the existing mortar color and joint profile, or a replacement unit dimensioned off the original, asks less of a reviewer than a substitution they have to interpret. We write the assessment so the reviewer's question is already answered on the page, with the existing unit, its dimension and profile, and the proposed match set side by side.
Can exterior repair work count toward Houston's historic-site tax exemption?
Qualifying expenditures can, and the threshold is worth planning a program around. The city's historic-site tax-exemption program ties the annual exemption to qualifying exterior and interior rehabilitation expenditures once those expenditures reach at least 25 percent of the building's base improvement value. Eligibility, and the value the percentage is measured against, are settled between the owner, the owner's tax advisor, and the city. Our part is to scope the exterior work so the paperwork holds up: repairs itemized by elevation and assembly, materials and quantities named, photographs before and after, and a phasing plan that keeps related exterior work inside one program instead of scattering it across three budget years.
Serving Houston and the Gulf Coast — see all Houston & Gulf Coast service areas
Related Services
These services regularly share an access setup and a schedule with Houston facade work.
Exterior Building Repair
Corroded lintels over a storefront opening, spalled brick, and displaced stone are structural problems wearing a facade's face. Griffin repairs those first, so the coating and sealant scope on a Houston building is priced against a wall that will hold it.
Review this service →Commercial Waterproofing
A facade repair cuts into the path water already takes down the building, from coping to parapet to sill to the head joint over the storefront. On a Houston elevation where a mid-century frame meets older masonry, that path goes back as one system instead of being patched twice.
Explore this service →Curtain Wall Repair
Houston's aluminum glazing generation begins in the 1950s, and on a mixed-age downtown elevation its perimeter is usually the first joint to let go. Gasket, spandrel, and perimeter sealant repairs are detailed with the masonry they abut, since each side of that joint takes a different material.
Learn more →Protect Your Houston Property
We mobilize to Houston for facade assessment and repair on Main Street Market Square commercial blocks, city-designated landmark properties, and mid-century buildings whose glazing perimeters have outlived their sealant. Griffin Restoration Inc. returns a scope that separates in-kind repair from work the city will want to see first.