By Jared Ebersole in Video — 30 Apr 2026

How New York Cleans Windows Hundreds of Feet in the Air

New York's window washers moved from ledges and leather belts to roof machines, suspended platforms, and now robots, but the job still carries real risk.

The clean glass skyline has always depended on people doing work the rest of the city tries not to imagine.

From the sidewalk, a tower looks sealed and effortless. Up close, every pane collects dust, rain streaks, construction grit, exhaust, fingerprints, salt, soot, and mineral residue. A building can spend billions on its facade and still look neglected if nobody goes outside to wash it.

In New York, that means sending workers into the air.

For the first generations of skyscrapers, window cleaning was terrifyingly direct. Washers worked from ledges, window frames, and narrow exterior footholds. The city grew upward faster than safety technology did, and the job became one of the most visible forms of urban risk.

By the early 20th century, leather safety belts became part of the trade. On many older buildings, cleaners used belts clipped to anchor bolts installed near window frames. The worker could lean backward out of the window, suspended by the belt, and clean the glass immediately around them.

That system sounds archaic because it is, but it did solve a real problem for buildings with operable windows. If the sash opened, a washer could work window by window, clipping into anchors as they moved. New York regulations still contain detailed requirements for window-cleaner anchors, including how bolts are attached to frames or mullions.

The method also shows why architecture and maintenance cannot be separated.

As glass curtain-wall towers became common, windows stopped opening in the old way. Facades became sealed skins. Workers could no longer clean a skyscraper by leaning out from each individual window. The building itself had to provide access.

That is where the roof machinery comes in.

Modern high-rise window cleaning often depends on a building maintenance unit, or BMU: a permanent machine on the roof that can support a suspended platform, cradle, or rig. From below, these machines look like small cranes parked on the skyline. From the roof, they are the interface between a glass tower and the people responsible for maintaining it.

The platform lowers down the facade. Workers clean in vertical drops. On complicated buildings, the rig may need to move around setbacks, curves, overhangs, terraces, fins, louvers, and architectural details that look beautiful in renderings and become logistical problems in the air.

Even with modern systems, danger has not disappeared.

In November 2014, shortly after One World Trade Center opened, two window washers were trapped outside the tower when a cable malfunction left their platform hanging sharply near the 68th floor. Firefighters cut through the glass from inside the building to pull them to safety. The image was unforgettable because it made the hidden risk public: two workers, a tilted scaffold, and the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere suddenly turned into a rescue scene.

Older buildings can be dangerous in a different way.

In 2017, a window washer died after falling from 60 Madison Avenue in the Flatiron District. DNAinfo reported that a hook connected to his safety harness broke, according to police and a colleague. OSHA accident records from other window-cleaning fatalities show the kind of failure investigators worry about: anchors pulling out, missing structural bolts, bad rigging, and equipment that looks secure until weight is placed on it.

The job is safer than its early skyscraper-era reputation, but it remains unforgiving. A small failure at height can become fatal before anyone has time to correct it.

That is why robots are starting to matter.

In 2024, Skyline Robotics, working with The Durst Organization and Palladium Window Solutions, deployed Ozmo at 1133 Avenue of the Americas. The company described it as the world's first robotic-armed window-cleaning robot operating on a skyscraper. The system rides in building-access equipment and uses robotic arms to wash the facade while human operators supervise from a safer position.

Skyline says Ozmo can clean up to three times faster than traditional window cleaning. The more important claim is not speed. It is exposure. If a robot can do more of the repetitive work on the glass, fewer humans have to spend as much time hanging against it.

This does not mean window washers vanish tomorrow.

Buildings are irregular. Weather changes. Facades age. Access systems differ. Robots still need operators, maintenance, planning, and buildings compatible with their equipment. The city has thousands of older structures that were never designed for robotic cleaning and many newer ones with custom shapes that complicate automation.

But the direction is clear.

New York's window-cleaning history is the story of buildings forcing a trade to evolve: ledges, belts, anchors, cradles, roof rigs, rescue procedures, and now robotic systems. Every new facade pushes the same question back to the architects and engineers: once the glass is up, how will someone clean it?

The skyline looks weightless when it shines.

It only shines because maintenance was designed into it, or because someone has to take the risk that design forgot.