Owners, shareholders, renters and shopkeepers west of the park tend to ask us the same handful of things, so the answers are sorted below by the part of the home or business they concern. When a statute, a city rule or a published source decides the matter, it is named, so you can check it for yourself; this is practical guidance, not legal advice.
Roofs, yards and the top of the house
We live on the top floor beside the stair to the roof, and the burglars in the West 80s crossed the rooftops — what up there can legally be locked?
Less than most people expect, and more than nothing. The roof bulkhead door itself is off limits for a keyed or code lock: the Multiple Dwelling Law says it is never self-locking and is fastened inside with movable bolts, hooks or a lock that needs no key from inside, and the city's entrance-door rule says bulkhead doors have no key locks at all. That rule exists so that people can get out onto the roof in a fire, and it is why the 2019 team the 20th Precinct described could come down through buildings once they were up top. What you can change is your own side of that landing. Your apartment door is the one that matters most, and a strong smart deadbolt with a good strike and long frame screws belongs there. If you have a terrace or a window onto a roof, its lock can be improved as long as it still opens from inside without a key. And the board can add a door contact or an alarm to the bulkhead so that someone is told when it opens, which deters roof-crossers without trapping anyone.
Our garden duplex has a door under the stoop and another into the building's hall — which one should carry the smart lock?
The one the household uses every day, and in a garden duplex that is usually the under-stoop door, because it lets you in without passing through the building at all. That door also faces the weather and the areaway, so we choose a keypad deadbolt with a solid weather rating, or a fingerprint model if the household prefers not to share codes. The door into the building's hall then becomes the secondary door. It still needs a proper deadbolt, since anyone who gets into the building can reach it, but it can often stay mechanical, or take an inside-only retrofit if you want to see in the app that it is locked. The mistake we see is the reverse: a smart lock on the hall door because it is the “front door” on the lease, while the under-stoop door, which everyone actually uses, keeps a twenty-year-old cylinder that half the neighborhood once had a copy of.
Old doors, transoms and the glass around them
Our walk-up apartment door still has a glass transom over it — does that matter once a smart lock goes on?
Yes, because a lock only protects the opening it is fitted to. A transom that can still be pushed open or broken is a way around the best deadbolt on the door below. In old-law tenements of four or more stories, the city's Housing Maintenance Code already deals with this for fire reasons: where one-hour apartment doors are required, transoms onto the public hall are to be sealed and fire-retarded, and other hall transoms are glazed with wire glass and permanently sealed shut. If yours is sealed, fire-rated and fixed, it is not a security gap and the smart lock does its job. If it still opens, or still has ordinary glass, that is a condition for the owner to correct, and we would rather tell you before installation than after. We do not seal or alter transoms ourselves on a rental door, because the door assembly is the owner's responsibility; on a co-op door the board's rules decide who does it. What we can do is install the lock, note the transom on the written survey and suggest a door contact if you want to know when the door opens.
Gates, courtyards, lanes and rooms
Our building is entered through a gated arch, then a courtyard, then a lobby — which of those doors can a shareholder actually change?
Only the last one: your own apartment door, and even that within the house rules. In courtyard buildings like the Apthorp, where wrought-iron gates in the arches lead to a courtyard with a garden, a driveway and the entrances to the apartments, the gate, the courtyard and each lobby are common property run by the board or the condominium. Their access system, whether staffed, keyed or on fobs, is the building's decision and its contract. That is not a reason to skip the unit lock; it is a reason to plan it with the building's layers in mind. With staff at the gate and a lobby beyond it, your door's job is less about strangers off the street and more about people who are already inside: contractors working on other floors, staff of other households, visitors who were let through. So we put weight on personal codes, a log of who opened the door and an auto-lock, and less on gadgets aimed at the street. If the board is reviewing the gate or lobby system, its managing agent can talk to us separately.
Our walkway has a locked gate at each end — can both gates take keypads without trapping anyone inside the lane?
Yes, if the gates are treated as exits as well as entrances. A lane with a gate at each end, like the one Pomander Walk is known for, has to let everyone inside leave freely in either direction, at any hour, without a key, a code or a phone. That rules out double-sided keypad locks and anything that needs a credential from inside. The usual answer is a keypad or reader on the street side of each gate, an electric strike or a gate lock that holds the gate shut, and a lever, push bar or exit button on the inside that releases it with one simple motion. Both gates can share one list of codes, so a household adds its dog walker once and both ends work. Power and the controller sit on the property, out of reach from the sidewalk. Because a lane like this is usually owned in common, the co-op or association decides the system and who administers it; individual households then manage their own users within it. On a landmark property the reader's position on the gate or the masonry also becomes a Landmarks Preservation Commission question.
I rent a room in one of the old SRO buildings — can I add a smart lock to my room door?
Not on your own say-so, and this is one of the few places where we will not proceed until the building's position is clear. HPD's Shared Housing Roadmap explains that tenants in rooming units live in their own rooms with locks on their doors and share bathrooms or kitchens, so your room should already lock, and if it does not, that is a condition to take up with the owner. Adding a second lock is different from adding one to an ordinary apartment: the Multiple Dwelling Law section that lets tenants add their own lock excludes hotels, and many West Side SROs began as residential hotels. The same HPD report warns that smart locks do not have master keys that management or the Fire Department can override in an emergency, and proposes that future rooming-unit locks have FDNY-approved fail-safe release. So the honest answer is: ask the owner in writing, and if the reply is unclear, the Goddard Riverside Law Project, which represented SRO tenants in a 2024 West Side Rag story, helps tenants with housing questions. If the owner agrees in writing, we fit a lock that keeps a working key and opens from inside in one motion.
Co-op rules and fire-escape windows
Our co-op only lets residents do alterations in the summer — does changing a lock count as an alteration?
It depends on the wording of your house rules, and it is worth asking before you book rather than after. Brick Underground notes that some buildings only allow renovations in the summer and that most limit work to 9 to 5 on weekdays. Those rules are written with kitchens and bathrooms in mind, and many managing agents treat a lock swap on an existing bore as repair or maintenance rather than an alteration. A new bore through the door, a change to the corridor face, or any wiring to a strike in the frame is more likely to count. Our practice is simple: we send you a short description of exactly what will be done, with photos of both faces of the door, and you send it to the managing agent with a one-line question. If the answer is “summer only”, an inside-only retrofit on the existing deadbolt often qualifies as no change at all, and the full smart deadbolt can follow when the window opens. Either way we keep to the building's weekday hours.
Can the security gate on our fire-escape window be opened with a code instead of a key?
No, and a good installer will not offer to make it so. A fire-escape window is a way out of the apartment in a fire, often in smoke and in the dark, and HPD states plainly that key-locked gates on fire-escape windows are prohibited. The Fire Code adds that fire escapes and the access to them are kept free of obstructions at all times. A keypad, a fingerprint reader or a phone-operated latch on that gate would recreate the same problem as a key: someone who is panicking, a child, a guest or a firefighter coming in from outside would need knowledge they may not have. What is allowed is a gate designed to be opened from inside by hand, without a key or a code, and a window lock that works. If the fire escape worries you because of the 2019 rooftop burglaries, the useful additions are a contact on the window that reports when it opens, a camera aimed along the escape where the building permits it, and the habit the 20th Precinct urged at the time: keep the window locked whenever you are out. We fit the contact; we do not put any code on the gate.
Shops, practices and towers
Burglars on Amsterdam Avenue got into a coffee shop through the glass above its door — what should happen to the fanlight over ours?
It means looking at the glass as well as the lock. In the August 2026 break-ins West Side Rag described, one business was entered after a large rock went through the window above the front door, another had a window smashed but held, and a third was broken into with the same rock. A smart lock with staff codes and a log is still worth having; it tells you who opened up, it stops lost keys from being a problem and it locks itself at closing. But it cannot stop someone climbing through a fanlight. For a storefront we look at the whole opening: the glass above and beside the door, whether a roll-down gate is used, where the alarm's contacts and glass-break detectors are, and how strong the frame is around the strike. Often the right package is a keypad lock on the door plus a glass-break detector and a contact, with the alarm and the lock reporting to the same phone. We quote the lock at the published Manhattan rates and refer the glazing to the right trade.
Our practice suite opens off the lobby of a Central Park West building — can the door let patients into the waiting room on schedule without opening the treatment rooms?
Yes, by treating the suite as two zones. The suite entrance can run on a schedule, unlocked during reception hours if someone is at the front desk, or on a buzz-in or a keypad if nobody is, and locked automatically at the end of the day. The inner door from the waiting area to the treatment rooms or offices then gets its own lock with staff codes, so a patient who arrived early, or someone who wandered in from the lobby, cannot walk through. Both doors must still open from inside with one motion. Because the suite is in a residential building, the board or managing agent usually controls the lobby hours and may have rules about what hardware can face the lobby, so we confirm those before ordering anything. Staff codes go in the log by name, which helps if records ever have to show who was in the suite and when. For a one-door suite, a keypad lever with a schedule and a privacy mode is often enough.
In our Riverside Boulevard tower only the building's locksmith may touch apartment doors — is a smart lock still possible?
Usually, but on the building's terms. Doorman towers along Riverside Boulevard often have a management policy that only the in-house locksmith, or a contractor it approves, may change apartment entry hardware, partly because corridor doors are rated and partly because staff need emergency access. We work in one of three ways. We can supply and fully program a lock the building's locksmith then fits, so the door work stays with them and the codes, phone keys and administrator setup stay with us. We can fit it ourselves after the management office approves the model and the method in writing. Or, where neither is allowed, we can install an inside-only retrofit on your existing deadbolt, which in many buildings does not count as changing the door at all. Whatever route, the building's emergency key arrangement keeps working, and the hallway side keeps to the standard the building sets. Ask the office for its policy in writing; it saves a wasted visit.
