Miami

The City of Miami is not a single building stock, and the hardware on a door usually tells you which Miami you are standing in. A wood-frame cottage in the West Grove, a 1920s masonry duplex in Shenandoah, a concrete-block warehouse in Allapattah, a MiMo-era motel on upper Biscayne Boulevard, and a curtain-wall tower in Brickell were put up under different codes with different framing, and they fail in different ways. A jamb that has been holding a strike plate since before the Second World War does not respond to the same repair as a hollow metal frame grouted into block. We read the frame, the hinge condition and the strike alignment first, then choose hardware that suits what is actually there.

Aluminum Storefront on Flagler Street, Calle Ocho and NW 2nd Avenue

Street-level retail across the city runs on narrow-stile aluminum storefront, and the stile width dictates everything. Downtown Flagler Street’s electronics and jewelry shops, the small businesses along SW 8th Street through Little Havana, the galleries and shops on NW 2nd Avenue in Wynwood, and the storefronts on NE 2nd Avenue in Little Haiti are largely the same door in different clothing: a narrow aluminum stile that will not accept a standard mortise lock body, hung on offset pivots rather than butt hinges.

The usual problems follow from that. Bottom pivots wear and the door drops, so the hookbolt of a deadlatch no longer clears the jamb keeper. Mortise cylinders back out because the set screw was never seated. Rim cylinders driving a rim exit device get chewed up on doors that are cycled hundreds of times a day. Closers on these entries need working backcheck, because a door pushed open hard against nothing but the arm will pull the top pivot loose. On the older downtown frontages, rolling grilles and their cylinders are a separate item owners forget about until the grille will not lift.

Warehouse Buildings That Became Something Else

Wynwood, Allapattah and Little River are full of mid-century concrete-block and tilt-up warehouses that now hold galleries, breweries, showrooms and offices. When a building’s use changes from storage to retail or assembly, the door requirements change with it. Rooms that once needed nothing more than a keyed cylindrical lockset on a hollow metal door now need panic hardware that releases with a single motion. That usually means a rim exit device on a single door, or vertical rod devices on a pair where a mullion is impractical for moving inventory or artwork.

The frames are often serviceable, which is worth knowing before anyone quotes a full replacement. A hollow metal frame set in block can be re-prepped for a modern strike, reinforced, and fitted with a continuous hinge if the leaf has been racked by years of forklift traffic. What usually does need replacing is the lockset: a worn Grade 2 cylindrical lock on a door that now sees public traffic should be a Grade 1.