Three or four minutes down Frankford Avenue. That matters more here than in most places, because a chip on East Kensington's block-paved streets does not stay a chip for long: filled early it is $60–$130 and half an hour, and once it has run you are looking at $250–$450 for a fitted windshield plus an hour of bay time and the safe drive-away wait. Side, quarter and back glass is $200–$500. 1028 E Columbia Avenue, 8 to 5 weekdays. Call 215-608-1108.
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East Kensington is where the mills went. Half the big buildings between York Street and Lehigh Avenue have been turned into apartments, studios and workshops, and the other half are still doing something industrial. Almost none of them came with parking. So the cars belonging to a fifty-unit conversion sit on the same street as the cars belonging to the houses that were there first, and they sit on it around the clock. That is the first thing that shapes the glass work here. The second is what they are parked on: Trenton Avenue and a good many of the streets around it are Belgian block with old freight rail still set into the surface.
Cobbles and rail are harder on damaged glass than people expect. A star that would sit quietly on smooth asphalt for a year gets flexed every few feet here, and it runs. The same sequence turns up constantly — a small mark picked up on the highway in the fall, ignored because it was out of the sight line, then a line clear across the screen after a fortnight of block paving and one cold night. Fill it while it is still a chip and it is half an hour and $60–$130. Leave it and it is a fitted windshield at $250–$450 and a morning of your time. The bay is a few minutes down Frankford Avenue, 8 to 5, Monday through Friday.
Frankford Avenue is the western edge and the way in and out. The streets that run parallel to it — Trenton, Coral, Amber, Emerald — carry the local traffic, and Trenton Avenue is the one everybody notices: block paving with rail still set into it, wide enough to be parked on badly from both sides, and used as a cut-through anyway. York Street and Norris Street handle the crosstown movement, Lehigh Avenue closes the top end as a truck route, and Front Street and Kensington Avenue run under the El on the far side. Between them the ground is a mix of loading bays that still get used, contractors parked up and residents' cars, so a spot with genuine room beside a vehicle is a find here rather than a given.
“My car was broken into and one window was completely shattered. Rich gave me a quote right away and was able to replace it the next morning at a very reasonable price. He also cleaned up all the glass that I didn’t get a chance to clean up before dropping off my car. I had a great experience and I would definitely recommend using his business for window replacements”
The road surface does more damage in East Kensington than anything else, not by breaking glass outright but by finishing off glass that is already marked. Block paving and embedded rail on Trenton and the streets around it work a chip loose on every trip. Second is break-ins, spread across the mill conversions where cars sit unattended all day and the residential blocks where they sit unattended all night. Third is site and yard grit — this is still a working industrial pocket, and sand, dust and cut-off debris land on parked cars and get dragged across the screen by the first wipe. Fourth is highway stone, collected somewhere else entirely on I-95 or Aramingo and brought home to a street that will turn it into a crack.
Frankford Avenue southwest is the entire journey — from York Street it is about three minutes, and Columbia Avenue crosses Frankford a few blocks before Girard. From the Aramingo side, come down Aramingo to Frankford Avenue and turn. If the car is not really drivable — a screen you cannot see through properly, or a door window gone in bad weather — do not move it twice: call 215-608-1108, describe where it is standing, and we will work out whether the van can reach it or whether it is worth taping the opening and bringing it in.
Auto Glass Installed works across Fishtown and the surrounding towns — pick your neighborhood:
Faster than the same chip would somewhere with smooth road. There is no honest number of days, because it depends on where the break is, how deep it went and what the weather does — but the two things that make it run are flex and temperature swing, and this neighborhood supplies both: block paving and rail under the wheels, and a car that sits outside through a freeze and then gets a defroster aimed at it. If you can still cover the break with a quarter and it is not in your line of sight, it is probably still a $60–$130 fill.
Often yes, and those lots are some of the better mobile addresses in the neighborhood. What decides it is whether there is a clear car's width on the damaged side and room to stand at the front corner, plus a dry enough spell — urethane needs a clean, dry bond line, and wind carrying grit onto a fresh bead makes the drive-away time a guess rather than a figure. Send the details on 215-608-1108 and you will get the answer on the call, not after a van has been sent out.
Yes. Quarter lights, vent glass and the small fixed panes behind the doors are all tempered and all sit in the $200–$500 band along with door and back glass, usually toward the lower end. The part is the variable rather than the labor: on an older or less common car it may take a day or two to source, so the year, make and model on the phone tells us whether it is a same-week job or a next-morning one. In the meantime, tape the opening from the inside rather than leaving it.
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