The Problem

A 1920s Park Slope brownstone with no straight walls and a client who wanted a curved open-riser stair connecting three floors. The original stair box was 47 inches wide at one end and 44 at the other. Every subcontractor we called walked after the site visit.

The Process

Tread's crew spent a full day templating the space with a 3D laser scanner before touching a drawing. Shop drawings came back in ten days — three revisions over two weeks as we resolved the landing geometry with the architect. The build ran six weeks in their shop, then a four-day installation. They found a clearance conflict with the HVAC rough-in on day two and resolved it on-site without a change order.

The Problem

A 22-room boutique hotel in the West Loop needed a code-compliant egress stair that read as a feature element, not a fire exit. The floor plate was irregular, the owner wanted floating treads, and the budget had a hard ceiling. ICC occupancy load calculations added a handrail geometry constraint that ruled out two of our initial concepts.

The Process

Tread produced a custom steel mono-stringer with cantilevered white oak treads — a solution that hit the egress width requirement without the visual weight of a traditional frame. They attended the code review meeting with our structural engineer, came with their own calculations, and left with an approval stamp. Fabrication ran eight weeks concurrent with our rough-in schedule.

The Problem

A 14,000 sq ft Tribeca loft conversion with four interconnected levels, two scissor stairs required by the DOB, and a penthouse feature stair the architect specified as a centerpiece. The scissor configuration had never been built in this building type under current NYC code — the DOB reviewer flagged it twice. The feature stair required a 28-foot continuous steel stringer with no intermediate support.

The Process

Tread's principal flew to Albany for the variance meeting. They modeled the scissor geometry in full 3D and produced a 47-page submission package that the DOB reviewer described as the most complete they had seen for a residential conversion. The 28-foot stringer was fabricated in three sections, stress-tested at their shop, and field-welded over a single weekend to avoid disrupting the concrete floor pour scheduled Monday. Total project span: eleven months from first site visit to final inspection.