National Park Service
Fort Jefferson lighthouse, Dry Tortugas
The lighthouse at Dry Tortugas National Park, seventy-odd miles out in the Gulf from Key West, is fitted with Brandywine Forge stainless shutter hardware.
Projects & awards
Selected Projects
From a Caribbean cruise port to a Charleston landmark, a few of the jobs we’re proud to have forged hardware for.
Historic Falmouth Port, Jamaica · Royal Caribbean terminal
Hurricane hardware for 12-foot doors
Opened in March 2011, the Port of Falmouth reopened a historic Jamaican port, designed to replicate a typical English seaport of the Georgian era. The design group, IDEA Orlando, chose Brandywine Forge to design and execute hand-forged hardware that carried their vision of Jamaica in the late 1700s through the new seaport “village.”
The doors are big — 12′ high by 8′ to 14′ wide and 4″ thick — and the north shore of the island sees hurricane winds. The structures are poured concrete with brick and limestone façades, so we looked to 18th-century Caribbean examples: the pintles that have held the doors of Charlotte Amalie’s ocean-side warehouses on St. Thomas through two hundred years of hurricanes. We designed pintle anchor plates for the contemporary construction and buried them behind the masonry, which kept our favorite structural engineer more than satisfied with the math.
When the big winds blow, it’s the bolts that keep the doors locked. We scaled up the 1770s shutter bolts of Carpenters’ Hall in Philadelphia: horizontal bolts of forged ¾″ round on 3″ × 18″ plates, plus matching head and foot bolts that can be locked disengaged and then dropped or lifted into place to secure the doors.
2016 Palladio Award · New design & construction over 5,000 sq ft
Howell House, Panama City, Florida
Eric Watson, Architect. This new residence on the Florida Gulf coast is fitted with shutters for storm protection. Brandywine stock stainless steel shutter hardware was specified by the architect for ease of installation and maintenance-free performance.
Stainless steel is the only option this close to salt water. We’ve tried galvanizing and other exotic finishes, but good American-made 304 grade stainless is the one solution that needs no maintenance and protects the home from rust and corrosion stains. Shutters button down the house as storms approach, secure it when it’s vacant, and block the sun from bleaching the interior.
Stainless hardware
2016 Carolopolis Award · Preservation Society of Charleston
36 Coming Street, Charleston, SC
Created in 1953 to recognize outstanding exterior preservation, restoration and rehabilitation, the Carolopolis Award is the oldest award of its kind; the Preservation Society has presented more than 1,300. Owner: College of Charleston. Architect: Meadors, Inc. Contractor: Huss, Inc. Hardware: Brandywine Forge.
We helped identify the original hardware and detailed the elements required to restore the house to its original appearance. It was the earliest application we’d seen of “plate pintles” — because it was the earliest generic use we’d seen of window weights. Driving a pintle into the frame as always would have obstructed the pocket the weights moved in, so the old smiths made drive pintles, cut them to length, forged back plates and riveted them on.
The original pintles were mostly intact, so we made only a few replacements but re-made all of the lost strap hinges. We also found evidence of a couple of unique original shutter dogs on the upper floors, matched them, and fitted the whole house with those little gems — different from any other shutter appointments on the street.
How we read the clues
Custom work
Replica gate hardware for a 1920s home
Beyond our stock lines we match originals and ideas — here, replica hardware that matched existing high-end hardware for new driveway gates on a lovely 1920s home.
“The Wall of Kong”
Not every project is glamorous. To isolate the blacksmith shop from the 50-foot-high bays of the building next door, we built a pair of big doors over a couple of Saturdays using 24-foot shipping crates for material. They’re 12′ tall, mostly open in summer and always closed in winter, with air-stop vinyl strips at the top so tractor trailers can pull in and unload steel. Cane bolts lock them open or closed — and yes, there’s a cat door at the bottom of the passage door.