Hurricane Sandy hammered New Jersey. At one point, more than 2.6 million residents were without power. The storm was responsible for the deaths of nearly 40 people. Hundreds of thousands of homes were damaged or destroyed.

In the coastal community of Asbury Park, the raging winds and pounding surf demolished buildings and tore up roughly 66,000 square feet of boardwalk.

But the windows Graham Architectural Products meticulously designed for the Convention Hall, the landmark structure that literally extends over the Asbury Park beach?

They did fine.

The story begins nearly a decade earlier, back in 2004, when the City of Asbury Park selected the architectural firm of Clarke Caton and Hintz to design the Convention Hall revitalization project.

Since the Convention Hall is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the project had to satisfy the stringent standards set forth by the National Park Service. And since GAP is widely recognized as the industry’s premier historic window preservation and replication specialist, the architects were soon meeting with GAP local sales rep Nick Irwin.

“It’s a classic and very historical building and it required a classic National Park Service approval routine from seed to flower,” Nick recalled. “But it was right in the core of our expertise.”

Even so, it was a tall challenge wrapped in an extended process.

The existing windows were triple hung, with an articulated brick mold and patterned, concave muntins. Fortunately, Graham is the only manufacturer in the industry that makes a triple hung window that can balance all three sashes within one frame.

Even more fortunate, Graham has Bill Wilder, one of the industry’s premier historical replication engineers, and a man with a long history of collaboration with the National Park Service. “He is tuned in really well with those guys,” said Irwin.

Once the partnership was sealed with the developer, the architect and the dealer (Colory Metal & Glass), it was simply a matter of experience, hard work, partnership and ingenuity.

“We had to go in and take the exact same profiles – everything down to the 32^nd of an inch – and basically create a window that is thermally broken with insulated glass that looks exactly like the old window,” said Irwin.

Graham made details of the existing windows from both the elevation and section sides. They did layovers, a process where Graham draws its window design the way it plans to engineer everything and lays it over the existing window like tracing paper to prove, Irwin said, “that what we intend to manufacture matches up exactly with what is there.”

Finally, the project was finally ready to be bid. Graham successfully bid it, meeting all the state’s historical requirements, and was eventually awarded the contract.

Graham went into production, beginning with the cutting of new dies and the creation of new tooling. Work began that same year with the existing triple hung windows being replaced with 97 of Graham’s Series 2275H triple hung windows.

Graham provided custom panning, custom mull covers, and performed extensive research to create a custom paint color – Aged Copper – to replicate the weathered look of the old windows.

The Convention Hall requested other custom items too, yet Graham managed to provide them while remaining within budget. Graham’s vast inventory of specialty accessories made the difference, eliminating the extra costs associated with one-off parts that otherwise would have been necessary.

Colory Metal and Glass brought the project home, using their years of experience with retrofit installations to achieve the required look.

Said Irwin, “It’s very gratifying to see a project go from conception, to paper, and finally to the opening. Graham is truly the leader in historical replication.”

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