The Drawings Have to Name the Color of the Glass

The Board of Architects is the part that surprises people. It was created, in the city's words, "to ensure that the city's architecture is consistent with the city's regulations and to preserve the traditional aesthetic character of the community"; it applies published Design Review Standards covering compatibility of color, materials, fenestration and proportion; and it reviews before the permit is issued. The important word is where. Not only in historic areas — the Board appears as a required approval on the ordinary window and door permit, listed alongside Building, Historical if applicable, Structural if commercial and Public Works if commercial.

The second surprise is the submittal itself, set out on page 14 of the Development Services permit requirements. Drawings must include a site plan, and the document says outright that "a Survey cannot serve as the Site Plan"; floor plans; a roof plan where skylights are involved; exterior elevations at 1/8 inch to the foot and details at 3/4 inch to the foot. They must "Provide Quantity of Doors/Skylights/Windows, Color of Frames and Glass and/or Mullions." Product approval drawings "must be an exact duplication of the Original Approval", carrying fasteners, mullions, glazing, span capacities and mounting details. Photographs of existing conditions have to be in color; the document states "NO black & white photos Allowed".

Then the item that separates this city from its neighbors. Coral Gables requires "site specific Wind Load Calculations with Digital Signatures by an Architect or Engineer for the openings where the Doors/Skylights/Windows are to be installed". There is no single-family exemption. Hialeah asks for per-opening pressures on multifamily and commercial only; North Miami ties its pressure item to buildings of two stories or more. In the Gables, a one-story house swapping four windows falls under the same sentence as a tower.

Coral Gables was incorporated on 29 April 1925, and the city puts the build-out plainly: "Much of Coral Gables was built at a meteoric speed between 1921 and 1926." A large share of the housing the Board of Architects is protecting predates the code regime it now sits inside by seventy years. On the element in question the city's preservation guide is direct — "windows are of critical importance in defining the period's character and should be maintained" — which is why an appearance conversation here is not decoration, it is the review.

The ownership pattern follows the housing, and the city's own paperwork shows it. The Board of Architects checklist asks for a homeowners association approval from named private communities — Gables Estates, CocoPlum, Tahiti Beach, Snapper Creek, Deering Bay, Journey's End — which is the paperwork of a city of owner-occupied houses inside gates, not of a rental market. The person deciding is usually the person living there. That makes the conversation shorter than a condominium's and the appearance question larger than anywhere else on this list.

1. 01Settle color and profile first, because both have to appear on the drawings and both have to survive the Board.
2. 02Have the wind load calculations prepared and signed for the actual openings rather than for a typical one.
3. 03Assemble the drawing set at the stated scales and reproduce the product approval exactly.
4. 04Submit for Board of Architects review with the calendar in hand, then file for the permit.
5. 05Carry the job through window and door bucks, anchors and final, and through final historical where that applies.

The Board's calendar is the first thing we plan around. It meets every Thursday at 8:30 AM at 427 Biltmore Way, submissions are due by 12 PM on the Friday before, and a project costing over $75,000 must be publicly noticed at least five business days ahead of the meeting. None of that is difficult. All of it is a date, and a specialty unit ordered before the date is a unit ordered on a guess. We would rather lose two weeks at the front of a job than a quarter in the middle of one.

Sources: City of Coral Gables Development Services permit requirements (4 April 2025 revision), page 14; the city's Board of Architects page; the city's history and historic preservation pages — checked 2026-09-24