Founded by Hastings and Anne Read more than 15 years ago, Oakleigh grew out of what Read describes as “a hobby gone wrong.” The couple had built careers in finance and the boating industry that led them from the United Kingdom, where they were born, to New York, Florida, and then Alabama. It was here that the two discovered a passion for woodworking, beginning with a home workshop meant to facilitate a home restoration that has since grown into a 6,000-square-foot facility in downtown Mobile.

From the outset, their work has centered less on historic preservation and more on an appreciation for quality and craftsmanship, as well as a willingness to test their limits. The restoration project initially centered solely on woodworking but eventually expanded to windows. This was less a calculated decision to focus on a specific building system and more the result of their desire to gain a comprehensive understanding of how to fix everything in their home. Making their first window was simply an act of reverse engineering: They disassembled an existing window to discover how it worked and then replicated it with wood components they made or hardware they purchased.

Their first major project involved the restoration of Mobile’s Middle Bay Lighthouse, while the project that got them early recognition was the restoration of a historic church. The latter contained dozens of multi-pane windows, several of which were 20-foot-tall and arched at the top. In all, there were more than 900 panes of glass.

While the hardware and mechanisms of these windows remain the same, Oakleigh continues to bring a high-touch, project-by-project approach to every project, from concept through installation support. As the Reads explained, this level of dedication oftentimes comes as a surprise to project teams. They don’t expect someone from the Oakleigh shop to come to the jobsite or to commit so fully to reproducing historic details.

Even when working on a brownstone in Brooklyn, more than 1,000 miles away from the shop, one of Oakleigh’s lead craftsmen showed up at the site to study the openings because there were no formal drawings available. He studied the exterior door and windows, including a bay window that needed to match the existing roofline, and they then built each piece from scratch to faithfully reproduce every detail with a level of fidelity that surprised even the project architects at Ingui Architecture. The resulting door and windows systems are virtually indistinguishable from the originals but also meet Passive House levels of performance.

“I couldn’t believe the level of detail that they put into their work,” says Michael Ingui, President of Ingui Architecture and founder of Passive House Accelerator. “There were details that we didn’t even expect them to reproduce, but they did it anyway because of how dedicated they are. There are very few companies capable of doing work of this quality and combining it with Passive House level of performance, and I am overjoyed to have them be part of the Passive House Accelerator community.”