American aluminium and vinyl windows, manufactured in Queens
Crystal Window & Door Systems is a New York manufacturer, founded in Flushing, Queens in 1990 and still headquartered there. It has grown into one of the largest window manufacturers in North America, with plants in Queens, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Missouri and California, and products distributed across more than forty states.
For projects in the five boroughs, being made locally is a practical advantage rather than a marketing line. Lead times are shorter, replacements and warranty parts come from the same city, and a site visit from the manufacturer is a drive rather than a flight.
The range spans architectural aluminium for commercial and multi-family work and residential vinyl for houses and smaller buildings, with ENERGY STAR certified options across both. Units are made to order, so custom sizes, architectural shapes and specialty finishes are part of the standard offering rather than an exception.
Crystal makes a wide range; these are the lines we specify most often in New York, with the data from the manufacturer’s own sheets. All are thermally broken aluminium; the windows and door share a 3¼-inch frame depth (the AC85 acoustic window is a deeper 7⅞-inch dual-layer frame), so they can be combined in one opening — a 5500 double-hung beside a 5100 fixed lite, for example — with matching sightlines.
The aluminium double-hung for co-ops, rentals and mixed-use buildings where the window has to look traditional, take a beating and clean from inside. Both sashes tilt in for cleaning, and the hardware is the kind a building superintendent can live with for twenty years.
The value double-hung in Crystal’s aluminium range, and the one developers reach for on rental and mixed-use buildings where every opening on the elevation is the same window. It shares the 3¼-inch frame depth and the tilt-in sashes of the 5500 but with a lighter hardware set and a ⅞-inch glass unit, which is where the price difference comes from. For most residential and light-commercial openings it is more than enough window; where the exposure or the floor height pushes the design pressure up, or the building wants a heavier meeting rail and a custodial lock, we specify the 5500 instead.
The thermally broken slider we used in the arched factory-loft openings at 420 12th Street, Park Slope. Suits wide openings where a double-hung would be too tall to reach, and comes as a two-lite (one fixed, one sliding) or three-lite (fixed centre, sliders each side).
This is the Crystal window for noise (technical detail on the acoustic glass page): a dual-layer assembly with two insulated glass units and a deep air space between them in a single 7⅞-inch thermally broken frame, as a casement, a fixed lite, or the two paired. It is the product we specify when the brief is a bedroom over the BQE, an apartment under a flight path, or a church next to a bus route, and it is the aluminium answer to the built-up soundproof window we made for 1763 Amsterdam Avenue. Crystal publishes lab ratings for five glass combinations, from an everyday configuration at STC 42 to a laminated-both-sides configuration at STC 57 — the glass make-up on the drawing is what sets the number, so we pick it against the measured noise on site.
For the openings that are not rectangles — the round window in a gable, the arch over a bay, the triangle under a roofline, the octagon in a stair — Crystal makes fixed shape windows in twenty-four standard geometries (see our shaped windows page for what each is used for), in the same finishes and glass as the lines above so a shaped unit matches the rectangular windows beside it. Where the shape sits over a standard window, the “extended leg” versions carry the frame straight down to meet it. We measure the opening with a template, not a tape, and the unit comes back made to it.
The aluminium terrace and balcony door that pairs with the windows above: same 3¼-inch frame depth, same finishes, and a matching transom when the opening needs one. It is an in-swing door (the Series 1450 is the out-swing version), hung on a heavy frame with a multi-point lock and a European lever, and it is what we used onto the private deck at 420 12th Street. Developers like it because one frame family covers every opening on a balcony floor, and because the door seals on compression rather than a slider track.
Crystal aluminum windows across a whole building: Surfview Towers at 25 Franklin Boulevard, Long Beach, an oceanfront seven-storey building where Crystal units glaze the side and rear elevations alongside custom double-hungs on the front and Alutech tilt-and-turns where the wind hits, all with Solarban 60 glass by Oldcastle. And a single-apartment replacement in a converted 1881 clock factory: Crystal Series 2300 sliders and a Series 1460 balcony door at Ansonia Court, 420 12th Street, Park Slope.
