Overview

Plans for a 100,000+ square foot addition, a new chapel and the complete renovation of the 84,000-square-foot original Motherhouse involved building and installing approximately 800 new and replacement windows.

Various wings of the convent had been built during different eras. In fact, different masons had worked on each side of the original 1860 brick building resulting (even in a particular wing of the building) in widely varying jamb depths, window widths, heights and shapes—all of which had to be carefully matched.

Project Details

• Every rough opening, sash opening and masonry opening was measured multiple times, and more than 440 unique replacement windows were built to fit the openings.
  
  
• Custom Charles Street panning was used throughout the renovation. Existing peeling sills and jambs were covered in clad, while interior trim and shutters remained intact.
  
  
• The Marvin architectural division recreated 22 distinctive, 12-foot high “angel-wing” windows. Each of these special windows featured highly complex authentic divided lites, beaded bars and decorative, exterior, one-piece milled upper sash.
  
  
• To fit the unusually slender dimensions of some of the original round top windows, the Marvin Signature team created new dies for the aluminum extrusions and worked to bend the extruded aluminum casing into an extremely tight arc without breaking the materials or equipment.