Questions we are asked in the Heights that a general smart-lock guide does not answer, grouped by the kind of building they come from.
Carriage houses and the doors on the mews
Our carriage house on the mews still has its tall wooden stable doors — where does a smart lock actually go?
Almost never on the stable doors themselves. On most converted carriage houses on Grace Court Alley, Hunts Lane or Love Lane the big leaves are kept for their looks and are bolted from the inside with cane bolts or a bar, while daily life goes through a smaller pedestrian door set into the facade or cut into one of the leaves as a wicket. That smaller door is where a keypad or fingerprint deadbolt belongs. It is closer to a normal door in size and weight, it swings on its own hinges, and a lock fitted to it does not have to hold a nine-foot leaf shut against the wind.
If the pedestrian door is a wicket cut into a carriage leaf, we look closely at the stile around it. The wood is often narrow and has been altered at least once, so we size the lock to the timber that is actually there and add a reinforced keeper on the frame side. Where the household also parks inside, the carriage doors can be monitored with a door contact and left mechanically bolted, which keeps them out of the keyless system entirely and avoids a motorised bolt trying to pull a sagging leaf into line.
Because these houses are inside the historic district and face the street directly, anything mounted on the facade — a reader, a camera, a doorbell — follows the Commission's equipment rules. A lock on the door itself is the simplest route, and that is usually where we start.
We want a reader beside the doorway rather than on the door — how does its cable get there without marking the brownstone?
A wall reader needs power and a data cable, and on a landmarked facade the cable is the part to plan. The LPC guidebook allows staff to approve equipment on a primary facade only where there is no other reasonable location, and asks that it sit in a discreet spot: within or beside the door opening, beneath a band course, under the stoop or behind the areaway wall. Where conduit has to show, staff may approve roughly ten inches of it, painted to match and fixed into mortar joints rather than decorative surfaces.
In practice we try to keep the cable inside. On a rowhouse the route is usually from the cellar or the vestibule ceiling, through the door frame or the reveal, and out at the reader's back box, so nothing runs across the face of the brownstone at all. Where the masonry is too thick to core, the reader can often move into the vestibule or onto the frame inside the door opening, which is easier to approve and better sheltered.
We photograph the facade, the reveal and the proposed position before quoting, mark up the route, and give you the manufacturer cut sheet for the reader. Those are the same materials the Commission asks for in a permit application, so if one is needed you or your architect have most of the package already.
The mail carrier, the post and the street door
The mail carrier opens our building's street door with a postal key in the old intercom — what happens to that when the door goes keyless?
Many small apartment buildings give the letter carrier access through a postal lock in the intercom panel or a separate key keeper beside the door. The Postal Service calls the key that opens these an arrow key and uses it for apartment panels, collection boxes and parcel lockers; the USPS Office of Inspector General has reported that the number of arrow keys in circulation is unknown and that lost keys were not adequately tracked. That is a reason to keep the postal lock separate from your new system, not to fold it in.
When we replace an intercom or add a reader, we do not remove or rewire the postal lock on our own. The building, not AESS, arranges any change to it with the local post office, and the carrier's access has to keep working through the change. The usual solution is to keep a postal key keeper or a lock cylinder in the new panel that releases the door the same way the old one did, while residents switch to codes or fobs.
On a landmarked building the Commission's rules also cover mailboxes and mail key lockboxes: within or beside the door opening, on a gate or door under the stoop, on a plain stoop wall, or on a post in the areaway. We position the new reader so the postal lock box can stay where it is or move to one of those permitted spots.
Brownstones that have become small co-ops
Our brownstone is a self-managed co-op of six or seven apartments — who decides on a keypad for the shared street door, and who holds the master admin?
The street door belongs to the corporation, so the decision is the board's, normally by the voting rule in your by-laws, and it should be recorded in the minutes. We are happy to come to a board meeting or send a written proposal with the hardware, the cost and how codes will work. What we will not do is fit a shared-door keypad at the request of a single shareholder, however keen.
Admin rights are the part small co-ops most often get wrong. One owner sets the system up on their own phone, sells two years later, and the building is locked out of its own door. We set up the account in the corporation's name with a shared email the board controls, give two officers admin rights, and give every other resident a user credential only. The written register we leave lists who holds what, so the next treasurer inherits it with the books.
Each household should still hold a working key for the street door, and every apartment keeps its own lock. If your proprietary lease requires the corporation to hold a duplicate key to each unit, as many do, that does not change because one shareholder fits a smart lock on their own door; the board simply receives a key or an agreed emergency arrangement for it.
The laundry, bike room and storage cages in our co-op all run on one old key everyone has copied — can those doors go keyless too?
Yes, and in a small building this is often the most useful work of the lot. A shared brass key that has been copied for twenty years has no record of who holds it. A keypad deadbolt or a small reader on the cellar door, the bike room and the roof door gives each resident a code that can be removed when they move out, and a log the board can look at after something goes missing.
The doors themselves need checking first. Cellar doors in older rowhouses are often thin, warped or fitted with a hasp; the lock is only as good as the door and frame it is on, and we will tell you if one should be replaced before it is made keyless. If a door is on a route someone might use to leave the building, such as a cellar door leading to the yard, it must still open from the inside without a key or code.
For the roof, we follow the building's existing arrangement for fire department access and do not fit anything that would stop a door that must open from the inside doing so. The cheapest sensible setup is usually one battery keypad deadbolt per door, all on the same app as the street door so the board has one place to remove a departing resident.
Old fabric: glass, plaster and brick
Our inner vestibule door still has its original etched glass — how do you fit a lock without putting the glass at risk?
Carefully, and usually without drilling near it at all. Most original glazed inner doors have a solid lock rail below the glass, and an interior-side retrofit lock or a compact deadbolt can sit in that rail using the existing bore. Where new boring is unavoidable, we tape and support the panel, drill from the side the glass is bedded on, and use a sharp hole saw at low speed so the door is not jarred.
We also think about what happens after installation. A motorised bolt that slams into a tight keeper sends a small shock through the door every time it throws. Easing the strike and setting the lock to a gentle throw protects the glass for years. If the glass is cracked or loose in its putty before we start, we will point it out and photograph it so everyone knows its condition.
If a thumb-turn sits within reach of the glass, a broken pane would let someone reach through and turn it. On an inner vestibule door behind a locked outer pair that risk is small; where the glazed door is the first line of defence, a keypad lock with the thumb-turn disabled when you are away, or a different door for the smart lock, is the safer plan.
Our walls are original plaster on brick — can a wired reader or door sensor be fished to the doorway without opening the walls?
Often, yes, but not always, and we say which before we price it. In many rowhouses the plaster is applied directly to the brick party wall with no cavity to fish through, so the route has to use the spaces that do exist: the cellar ceiling, the void behind the vestibule's wooden trim, the door frame and its reveal, and the run of an old bell or intercom wire if one is still in place.
Where a run has to cross a plastered wall, we prefer a small surface raceway painted to match, inside, over cutting a chase in old plaster that may crack well beyond the cut. For a lock on the door itself the question rarely arises: battery smart deadbolts need no wiring, and a door contact for monitoring can be wireless.
A wired strike and reader on a street door is the case where cable is unavoidable. Here we look first for an existing intercom pair or bell wire that can be reused or used as a draw wire. If a route cannot be found without damage, we will recommend a battery keypad lock on the door instead of a wired reader beside it.
Visitors, crews and checking your own security
A production company wants our house for a few days of filming — how should their access work?
Brooklyn Heights has been a favourite with productions for years; in 2012 the then Council Member Stephen Levin asked the city to put the whole neighbourhood on its filming hot-spot list, and in April 2025 the Brooklyn Eagle photographed a Law & Order shoot on the Promenade. If your house is the location, the location manager will want keys for prep, shoot and wrap days. Codes are a far better answer than keys.
We set a separate code for the location team that works only on the agreed dates and hours, on the doors they are allowed to use, and expires on its own when they wrap. The app log then shows exactly when the house was opened and by which code. Private rooms can be closed off with their own lock or a door kept on a different code, and a camera at the door gives you a view of arrivals while you are away.
Two practical points: keep your own household codes unchanged and private so you never need to share them, and ask for a walk-through with the location manager before and after the shoot. If the crew needs the street door of a co-op building, that is a board decision, and the board should issue its own time-limited code rather than a resident's.
Should we book the NYPD's free security survey before or after the smart lock goes in?
Before, if you can. The NYPD offers free security surveys through each precinct's crime prevention officer — the 84th Precinct covers Brooklyn Heights — and the officer evaluates locks, doors, lighting, windows and alarm systems and suggests corrective steps. Having that report in hand means the lock plan can answer it: a reinforced keeper where the frame is weak, a different door made keyless, better lighting at the stoop.
Book through the precinct or through 311. The survey is advice, not a specification. We read the report with you at the walkthrough and price the items that are within our work, such as locks, strikes, readers, door contacts and cameras, separately from anything a carpenter or mason should do.
If the lock is already in, the survey is still worth having. Officers often spot the things that defeat a good lock: a garden door with a weak frame, a cellar window without a grille, a side gate left on the latch.
Shops and offices on the Heights' main streets
Our Montague Street shop carries valuable stock — how does a smart deadbolt's strength rating compare with the lock it replaces?
Look for certification to the BHMA standards rather than marketing words. The current residential standard, ANSI/BHMA A156.40, specifies durability, operation and security tests for residential deadbolts, including seventeen security tests, one of which loads the door against the bolt with 1,350 pounds of force. Many lock makers still describe products by the older grade 1, 2 and 3 scale, with grade 1 the commercial-duty end.
Compare like with like. If your current lock is a heavy commercial mortise lock or a high-security cylinder, many residential smart deadbolts will be a step down in physical strength even though they add codes and logs. In that case a commercial smart lock in mortise or narrow-stile format, or a reader and electric strike working with the existing high-security cylinder as key override, keeps the strength and adds the convenience.
The rest of the opening matters as much as the lock: the frame, the strike plate and its screws, the gap at the edge, the glass, and the roll-down gate if you have one. We check all of them at the walkthrough and price any strike reinforcement separately so you can see what it adds.
