Vinyl Windows & Cornice Trim Do Not “Improve” Our Architecture

I was furious Monday evening. The City’s Preservation Board nearly voted to allow a home owner to keep the ugly & inappropriate vinyl windows he installed in a home located in a local historic district without the required building permit. I say nearly because it took some strong arguing from members Richard Callow and Anthony Robinson to convince Melanie Fathman to vote to require the replacement. Not surprising was that Mary ‘One’ Johnson and Luis Porrello voted to allow the owner to keep the windows in place.

This case involved an owner that moved to the city from University City. He indicated the old cornice was rotted and the windows were old and original. The cornice had a wonderful large dentil block and a nice wide soffit. The board behind the dentils was apparently rotten so the owner decides to rip it all down and put up a vinyl wrapped cornice instead. For dentils he was going to apply some vinyl ones that were in no way reminiscent of the originals.

The vinyl windows, like all vinyl windows, do not look like a wood window. I want to repeat that: No vinyl window looks like a wood window does. Period.

You may get the same pattern of six “lites” over one “lite” but that is about as close as you can get. The remaining details are way off due to the materials and how they are put together. A vinyl window has much thinner rails on the sash. The window is also considerably thinner than a wood window which means the plane of the glass is virtually that of the frame. The muntin dividers (aka grills) in vinyl windows are either the interior snap-in type or the ones that go between the glass. Again, this gives a very flat look. The vinyl wrap applied over the original brick wood mold in the openings also looses considerable detail in the process. And, vinyl windows even if custom fitted still end up reducing the overall opening. Only on rare occasions have I seen vinyl windows installed in one of our old buildings that looks halfway decent.

Part of the debate at the Preservation Board centered around the window installation contractors that install windows. In this case I think the owner did this to himself but often it is the fault of the contractors. The owner assumes the professional window installer is going to get a permit, if necessary, and follow all codes including any historic codes. Sorry folks, most often that is not the case. It is the owner’s responsibility to verify that all codes are being followed.

If you are not sure if you need a permit or, if you are in a historic district that requires exterior changes to be reviewed by the neighborhood and/or Preservation board, then you need to make phone call or two before you start your work. Don’t blame your contractor, especially if they are from the county.

In many cases if the home owner had contacted either the neighborhood association or the city’s building division they could have easily determined the requirements and avoided a situation of having installed windows that must now be removed. Appropriate wood windows are far more costly than vinyl windows. No doubt about it. That is why I still have original wood windows with metal storms on my place.

The Preservation Board all agreed to tell the homeowner he must rebuild the cornice in wood —- no vinyl wrapped ill-proportioned knock off. But when it came to the windows some members were content with requiring the removal of the vinyl wrap but leaving the windows. First, this shows a lack of understanding of window installation. Had they permitted the windows to be left but removing the trim wrap we would have seen gaps where the windows were slightly different sizes from the openings. It is possible to install vinyl windows into an original wood opening but it has to be planned from the start. If they had voted to require just the wrap removal it would have ended up looking worse, which would be hard to do.

Another issue I have with vinyl windows is the color — bright white. Boy do these stick out like a sore thumb. White trim is a very post WWII or early colonial thing, mostly inappropriate for St. Louis’ architecture. Our wood windows often had dark green window sashes with the window trim in another color. White lead paint became popular in the 1930s but before that white paint was a rarity in St. Louis. New wood windows come in some great colors including some nice tans & greens as well as black. When you have dark masonry building a bright white window simply creates way too much contrast. With a cheap vinyl window in white you are drawing attention to something better off not noticed. So please folks, save the white windows (wood or vinyl) for the colonial boxes in the suburbs.

What really got me going during the meeting was Mary ‘One’ Johnson’s comments how this would have been avoided if the neighborhood had informed the owner what could and couldn’t be done prior to any work starting. Ms. Johnson, a fellow REALTOR®, expects neighborhood associations to monitor property tax records to see if any home in their area has sold so that they can make sure owner doesn’t screw up the house. WTF? As REALTORS® we have pretty good access to tax records, much better than the general public. However, it would still be a time consuming process to look up each and every property in a neighborhood to see if it has changed hands. And how often is enough? Every month? Every week? Every day? Even just tracking those properties that are for sale could be a daunting task for any volunteer neighborhood association to take on.

Others on the PB asked if it was not the responsibility of the real estate agents. Some thought the title work should indicate such things. Well, sorry, it does not. And when we see the title work it is during the closing of the sale, not prior. But, I do think agents representing a buyer should help direct their clients to information on historic districts and building permits if they have reason to believe the buyer will be making some changes.

But the responsibility is really with the owner, not the contractors, neighbors or real estate agents. The owner is responsible for their own home.

If you want a really low maintenance home buy something newer. If you want a wonderful historic home with relatively low maintenance make sure you don’t paint the brick, do a great job restoring & painting the wood trim and get really good clad wood windows. If that is too much to deal with I suggest renting or buying a condo. Just don’t come into my city thinking bright white vinyl windows is an improvement.

– Steve