COMMERCIAL
CURTAIN WALL REPAIR
IN HOUSTON, TX.
Houston has been hanging glass on aluminum since 1956, when the Bank of the Southwest Building went up with the city's first aluminum curtain wall. Four years later the First City National Bank Building rose as an early abstract skyscraper, its floor-to-ceiling windows set back behind a protective concrete exoskeleton, and the International Style buildings around them framed plate glass in metal over exposed concrete. Those are different walls with different edges, and the sealant, the gasket, and the replacement lite that suit one of them are wrong on the next.
What Curtain Wall Repair Includes
Each item below is scoped to the system it sits on, because a 1956-generation aluminum wall and glass recessed behind a concrete frame concentrate their failures in different places.
Wet Seal Replacement
A wet seal is only as good as the joint it goes into, so the work starts by taking the old material back to sound substrate and reading what is under it. Joint width and glass bite are measured before a product is chosen, since silicone with the wrong movement capability tears at the same corners the last application did. Griffin records the profile, the product batch, and the adhesion pull results opening by opening.
Houston's first aluminum curtain wall went up in 1956, and the systems built here over the decade after it used glazing methods that current product lines rarely reproduce. On a wall of that vintage we are reading two things at once: what has failed, and what was originally there. Whether the glass was face-glazed into a channel, whether a wet seal has already been run over a dry-glazed system, and how much movement the frame passes into the joint all decide what goes back in. That reading is taken at a representative bay before an elevation is priced.
Gasket & Dry Glazing Repair
A dry-glazed system carries its glass on gaskets, wedge seals, and pressure plates, and it is built to admit some water and return it through weeps, gutters, and end dams. Those components age out on their own schedule, and none of it is visible from the sidewalk. Griffin logs the condition of each one by frame series, orders replacements against that series rather than against whatever fits the glass, and clears the drainage path while the covers are off.
On the low-rise examples in Houston's mid-century stock, the glazing runs as a horizontal band across the elevation instead of a row of punched openings. A band is one continuous assembly: one gasket profile, one pressure plate, one drainage path, repeated bay after bay, so a defect found at one bay is a question about the whole run. We sample at both ends and at the middle, and quantities come off the run in linear feet of frame before anyone counts lites.
Leak Investigation & Diagnosis
The stain on a ceiling tile records where the water left the wall, which is rarely where it came in. Griffin starts at that tile and climbs: exterior photographs at the opening and the ones above it, then water on one component at a time from the sill up, until the entry point shows itself and can be shown to the owner. A condition that cannot be reproduced stays in the report as an open item, with what was ruled out, so a later visit does not begin from zero.
The First City National Bank Building of 1960 set its floor-to-ceiling windows back behind a protective concrete exoskeleton. Glass in that position takes less direct rain than a flush wall does, which helps until someone has to find a leak in it: the concrete in front hides the glazing line from a boom truck at grade, and every ledge and reveal it creates holds water after the weather has passed. Access is planned with the investigation on that geometry, and horizontal surfaces are tested before the joint at the head of an opening.
Panel & Infill Replacement
Replacement work here stays inside the system the building already has. Damaged caps, bent pressure plates, delaminated spandrel infill, fogged units, and cracked lites come out; the opening is left secure and weathertight at the end of the shift; and what goes back is set with new perimeter seals and a drainage path confirmed open. Griffin does not design or fabricate curtain wall. When a frame or anchor turns out to have a structural problem, it leaves our scope with photographs and dimensions attached, for the owner's engineer to take up.
When Houston's older commercial blocks were modernized, their storefronts picked up large plate-glass windows set in aluminum frames, a change the city dates to the 1950s and 1960s. Those openings are still where most glass gets replaced, and a plate-glass storefront lite is large, heavy, and set where the public walks, so the plan covers sidewalk protection, delivery timing, and closure as much as it covers the glass. Where a run of identical openings shares one frame type, the run is measured and ordered as a unit.
Industries We Serve in Houston
Houston Has Built Curtain Wall Since 1956, and Each Generation Fails Differently
Houston's commercial glazing has a datable start. The city's own landmark record puts the first aluminum curtain wall on the 1956 Bank of the Southwest Building, and four years later the First City National Bank Building rose as an early abstract skyscraper whose floor-to-ceiling windows sit back behind a protective concrete exoskeleton. Those are two different ideas about where a building's weather line belongs. One hangs a skin outside the structure and asks every joint in it to keep water out. The other puts the structure outside the glass and lets concrete take the weather. A downtown portfolio usually holds both, and the repair written for one is the wrong purchase on the other.
The generation between them is the one a Houston property team is most likely to be holding. Landmark documentation for the city's International Style buildings lists steel beams, concrete, plate glass, metal window frames, and slab doors, with flat roofs above them and horizontal bands of window on the low-rise examples. Two consequences reach a repair budget. Plate glass is a single lite, so replacing one is a glass order rather than a sealed-unit order, and what it has to match is the frame it goes back into. A metal frame of that period was also detailed around a sealant and a gasket chemistry that have both moved on, which is why the substitution rather than the removal is where the pricing risk sits.
Past the repair itself, the generation decides the paperwork. Houston's adoption of the 2021 construction codes took effect on January 1, 2024, and the modernization program covered nine building codes. That is the package a glazed assembly answers to the moment it is opened or altered, and an older system is exactly where alteration starts: the original component is out of production, and the part that fits is a newer profile, a different glass, or a sealant with different movement. A survey worth paying for names the system, the substitutions each repair would require, and the review items an owner's architect should raise before procurement.
The date sets the top of Houston's glazing inventory, and a wall from anywhere near it carries frame, glass, and sealant conventions that few current product lines reproduce.
Four years changed where the weather line sits, and on a recessed elevation that decides the access plan, the surfaces a water test has to load, and what a survey can see from grade.
Glazing went into Main Street Market Square across that whole span, so two neighboring buildings there can need different frame components behind storefronts that look alike from the sidewalk.
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Curtain Wall Repair FAQ — Houston, TX
How do you tell which generation of curtain wall a Houston building has?
From the frame first, then the glass. The survey records how the glass is held in place (face-glazed into a channel, dry-glazed against gaskets and pressure plates, or wet-sealed at the perimeter), the mullion depth and spacing, the anchor detail at the floor line, and whether the lite is monolithic or an insulating unit. Those readings place the wall in a lineage: aluminum curtain wall arrives in Houston on the Bank of the Southwest Building in 1956, the First City National Bank Building recesses its floor-to-ceiling glass behind a protective concrete exoskeleton four years after that, and the International Style buildings around them frame plate glass in metal. Generation is the useful unit on a bid, because it predicts which components can still be bought, which have to be matched by profile, and where failures will concentrate before a single joint is opened.
Our glass sits back behind a concrete frame. Does that change the work?
It changes the investigation more than it changes the repair. The First City National Bank Building put floor-to-ceiling windows behind a protective concrete exoskeleton in 1960, and glass in that position takes less direct rain than a flush wall does, which tends to make its leaks late and hard to place. Water sits on the ledges and reveals the structure creates and stays there once the weather has passed, so a test has to load those horizontal surfaces and not only the glazing joints. The concrete also stands between a boom truck at grade and the glazing line, which is why the access method is settled during the assessment: the equipment that reaches a recessed perimeter is the same equipment that lets a crew watch it while water is running.
Can components still be matched on a mid-century aluminum system?
Usually, if someone measures them first. The mid-century systems here are built from the palette Houston's landmark documentation records for its International Style buildings, where metal window frames hold plate glass against concrete and steel, and the original extrusions, gaskets, and glass makeups behind that description are largely out of production. So we measure: frame depth and face dimension, gasket shape and durometer, glass thickness and tint, and the joint the perimeter sealant has to fill. Where the property carries a city designation, matching also matters formally, since Houston allows a unit damaged beyond repair to be replaced under administrative review as long as what goes back holds the original's size, shape, material, and pattern. Those dimensions go into the assessment so a supplier quotes against the building rather than against a description of it.
We manage several Houston buildings from different decades. How should the work be ordered?
Group them by system before ordering them by address. Buildings that share a frame generation share components, access methods, and failure patterns, so surveying them together produces one parts list and one crew setup instead of five. The second sort is regulatory: the city's January 2026 count is 23 historic districts, 305 landmarks, and 213 protected landmarks, and a designated property carries a review lead time that an undesignated one does not, so it is usually surveyed first and procured last. Urgency still overrides both sorts. Active infiltration and anything that could release from the wall go to the front of the schedule, and the rest of the portfolio is sequenced behind them by generation.
Our building is a two-story with a continuous band of glass rather than a tower. Is that curtain wall work?
Yes. Houston's landmark record notes horizontal window bands on the low-rise examples of its International Style stock, and a band is glazed with the same family of components a tower uses: metal frames, gaskets or wet seals at the glass, weeps and flashing at the sill, and an anchorage that has to take movement. What changes at two stories is access and economics. The whole elevation is within reach from grade, so investigation and repair can share one mobilization without swing stage or rigging, and a water test can be watched from inside and outside at the same time. The scope is still written per run rather than per opening, because the components repeat and so do their failures.
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Related Services
Glazing work on a Houston building normally arrives with one of these scopes attached.
Commercial Facade Restoration
On a Houston elevation where the structure stands in front of the glass, the concrete surround carries repairs, coatings, and joints of its own, and what happens to them decides what reaches the glazing perimeter behind it. We price the two together while the access is already up.
Review this service →Commercial Waterproofing
A window band leaves a horizontal surface above it and a sill line below, and both hand water to the glazing perimeter. Membrane, coating, and flashing work at those transitions is where a Houston glazing repair often has to reach in order to stay repaired.
Explore this service →Exterior Building Repair
Corroded anchors, cracked concrete at a floor line, and a spalled parapet are conditions a glazing survey finds while it is looking at something else. Griffin repairs them under the same access setup, which is half the reason to survey a whole elevation at once.
Learn more →Protect Your Houston Property
We mobilize to Houston for curtain wall repair on mid-century downtown buildings, designated landmark properties, and low-rise elevations glazed in continuous bands. Each assessment names the system on every elevation, the access it needs, and what a matched replacement would have to hold, before a foot of sealant is priced.