These are the questions Brooklyn owners, tenants and shopkeepers bring to a Nest job: landmark status, carved fronts, high stoops, shared houses, flooded cellars and whether Nest is even the right system. Each is answered here in full and not repeated in the FAQ further down.
Landmarks and the front of the house
How can we tell whether our Brooklyn building is landmarked before we pick a spot for the camera?
Look the address up in the Department of Buildings' Buildings Information Search, which has a landmark status field; according to an architecture firm that files with the Commission regularly, an "L" in that field means the work requires LPC approval. You can also call 311 and ask for the Landmarks Preservation Commission. Being on a pretty block is not proof either way: some striking streets are not designated, and some districts are newer than people think, such as Willoughby-Hart in Bed-Stuy, designated in June 2024. When you send us your address, we check the status before quoting, so the plan you get already accounts for it.
How many Nest devices can a landmarked rowhouse front have?
The Commission's Permit Guidebook allows no more than two cameras for every twenty-five feet of street frontage on small residential and commercial buildings, and no more than three on larger buildings, and asks that they be well spaced so the front does not look cluttered. A typical twenty-foot Brooklyn rowhouse is therefore planned around two devices at most on the front. A Nest doorbell at the door is one; a small camera under the stoop or behind the areaway wall is usually the second. Everything else goes on the rear of the house or inside, where the front-facade limits do not set the count.
How long should we expect to wait for Landmarks approval on a camera?
The Commission says staff can approve work that meets its rules in as few as ten business days. Real-world timing is often longer: an architecture firm that works with the LPC writes that staff are often backlogged and suggests expecting around sixty days for a Certificate of No Effect, and another Brooklyn installer estimates two to six weeks for non-emergency exterior work. Because of that, we usually suggest installing the rear and indoor cameras straight away and adding the front device once the approval arrives, so the house is not waiting on paperwork to be covered at all.
Do cameras inside our landmarked house, or on its back wall, also need the Commission's approval?
Interior cameras generally do not need LPC approval, though a co-op or condo may still have its own rules. The rear is less simple than many owners hope. The Commission's permits page says most exterior changes to both the front and rear facades of buildings in historic districts require review, but an architecture firm that files with the Commission notes that it is most concerned with what is visible from the street, and work that is not visible from public thoroughfares has an easier path. A small camera under a rear cornice is far easier to approve than one on the front, but on a designated building we still check before drilling rather than assuming the back is exempt.
Brownstone, brick and the mount itself
Will drilling into our brownstone front crack the stone?
It can if the drilling goes in the wrong place. Brownstone on a Brooklyn house is a facing a few inches thick over brick, and old carved surfaces are often soft or flaking, so an anchor in a window hood or door surround can break the stone around it. The Commission's criteria point to mortar joints, plain masonry, wood and metalwork as attachment points and away from decorative surfaces, and that is where we fix Nest mounts too. On a brick or stone wall, the brick or stone add-on on our list is $65. Where the only good camera position is on carved stone, we look for another spot, such as under the stoop, rather than risk the facade.
Why does your technician set the camera up on my phone before mounting it?
Because Google tells installers to. Its setup guidance says to connect the camera to the app before you install or mount it so you can still reach the QR code, which on some models is on the device itself and hard to scan once it is on a wall or under a stoop. Pairing in hand also lets firmware updates finish on the ground, lets us confirm the camera joins your network at full strength from a spot nearby, and lets you see the live view before we choose the final position. It adds a few minutes and saves a second trip up the ladder.
Can the camera or its cable be colored to blend into a brownstone or brick front?
The cable, yes. Google's guidance for the wired outdoor Nest Cam suggests running the cable along a ledge or hidden area and painting it to blend in with the house, and the Commission's criteria ask for any visible conduit to be painted to match. We generally do not paint the camera body itself, because paint can interfere with the lens, the sensors or the housing's seals. The better way to make a Nest device disappear on a Brooklyn front is placement: under the stoop, beneath a band course, behind the areaway wall, or tucked under a rear cornice where nobody on the sidewalk is looking.
Stoops, garden doors and the street door
Our front door is a full flight up a high stoop. How do we see someone taking a package from the bottom step?
A doorbell at the top of a stoop looks down at heads and can miss the lower steps, where couriers often leave boxes. One approach shared on a camera forum for a brownstone uses cameras on either side of the door about six feet up, angled at the stoop, with a third above the door pointing down the stairs. On a landmarked front the camera count limits that, so we usually pair the doorbell at the door with one small camera under the stoop or behind the areaway wall, which the Commission names as discreet spots, angled up the steps toward the sidewalk. Before drilling, we hold each device in place and check the view on your phone.
The garden apartment under our stoop has its own door. Can that door get its own Nest doorbell?
Usually, and it is often the most sheltered door on the house. Garden-level doors rarely have doorbell wiring, so a battery doorbell is the common choice; Google also offers an indoor power adapter for wired models where no bell wires exist. The space under a stoop is one of the discreet locations the Commission's guidance names, so on a landmarked house it is easier to approve than a device on the main facade, though it still counts toward the front's camera limit. If the garden unit is rented, the doorbell can live on the tenant's own Google account and network, so the owner upstairs does not see their visitors.
Package thieves in our building get buzzed in by someone else. What can a camera at the street door actually show?
CBS New York reported a case on Lexington Avenue where cameras caught a suspect who was apparently buzzed into the building before a package went missing, which is a common Brooklyn pattern. A camera inside the vestibule, facing the inner door, shows who came in and when, and a camera on the outside shows who pressed the buzzer. In a building you own, that can be a Nest Cam in the vestibule. In a building you rent, the street door and vestibule are the landlord's, so the camera there needs the landlord's approval; a tenant can still cover their own apartment door from inside. Either way, it is evidence after the fact, not a lock.
Shared houses, boards and southern Brooklyn
We own a two-family and rent the top floor. Should our tenant be able to see the front door camera?
That is your decision together, and it is worth making before the doorbell goes up. A Nest doorbell lives in one Google Home account, and the account owner decides who else is invited and sees the history. Many owners invite the tenant so they can answer their own deliveries, and keep the back-yard and owner-only cameras in a separate home that the tenant cannot see. If the tenant has a separate door, their device can be on their own account and network. Whatever you choose, tell the tenant what each camera covers, keep cameras off the tenant's private entrance and windows, and write it down.
Our co-op board wants a certificate of insurance naming the building before anything is mounted. Can you provide it?
Yes. Most Brooklyn co-op and condo proprietary leases require licensed, insured contractors and a certificate naming the building, and we send ours before the visit. Give us the exact names the managing agent wants on it, the building's working hours and any rules about hallway or exterior devices. If the board allows only devices inside your apartment, we plan around that, usually an indoor Nest Cam watching your own entry from inside, rather than putting anything in a common corridor. We will not install against a board's rules, because it is your lease, not ours, that pays for the mistake.
Our router sits on the cellar floor, and the cellar took water during Ida. Does that matter for the cameras?
It matters a lot. Every Nest camera depends on that router, so a router that floods takes the whole system down exactly when you would want it. During Hurricane Ida rain fell at a record 3.5 inches an hour, about double the sewer capacity of 1.75 inches an hour, and the city's health department describes unprecedented flooding in basements and low-lying areas, with southern Brooklyn flagged as especially vulnerable. We move the modem and router onto a high shelf or a dry upper floor when the incoming line allows it, ideally on a small battery backup, and we place any cellar equipment above the water line you have seen.
Our Mill Basin house has a side driveway running back to a garage. How should Nest cover it?
Detached houses in Mill Basin and much of southern Brooklyn give more room than a rowhouse. The usual plan is a doorbell at the front, one camera under the eave at the front corner looking down the driveway toward the street, and one on or near the garage looking back toward the house, so a car or person is seen from two directions. The garage camera is the one most likely to be beyond Wi-Fi, so we test signal there first. Under-eave spots shelter cameras from wind-driven rain, and on a waterfront lot we keep power and network equipment off the floor.
Choosing Nest at all
When is Nest the wrong choice for a Brooklyn building?
Nest fits single-family and two-family houses, apartments and small shops well: a handful of cameras, alerts on phones and clips in the cloud. It fits poorly when a building needs many cameras, needs continuous recording kept on site for weeks, has several owners or tenants who all need their own access to shared cameras, or has a weak internet connection that cannot carry many video streams at once. Our own Brooklyn camera team generally recommends wired recorder systems for whole apartment buildings for those reasons. If your building is in that category, we tell you before you buy more Nest devices.
Can our Nest cameras work with an alarm monitoring company?
Check before you buy. On the Brownstoner forum, a Brooklyn single-family owner asked whether Google Nest cameras and detectors could work with any monitoring company, and the reply that recommended a local alarm firm also said that firm was not compatible with Google Nest. Nest cameras send alerts to the Google Home app on your phone; whether a monitoring company can receive or act on them depends entirely on that company. If professional monitoring matters to you, ask the monitoring company in writing which devices it supports, and we will plan the cameras around the answer.
