Opening Doors | Amighini

Amighini Architectural travels the world for beautiful doors

By Tara Ryazansky

Photos Max Ryazansky

At City Heights, architect Noelia Amighini greets me at the door. It’s a large, beautiful, antique doorway that rises high above us. It’s so ornate that I take notice, but here at the Amighini showroom, it’s one of hundreds. “My great grandfather started all of this,” Noelia says as she shows me around. She navigates her way around marble fountains plucked from village town squares and portions of fireplace mantles with marble cherubs, wrought iron gates and old plaster pillars. “He had a demolition company.” She says that when he was taking down old buildings in Italy, he couldn’t bring himself to trash the lovely details. He started salvaging items like doors, stained glass windows, metal fixtures and some pottery pieces that Noelia still owns. “All of these things are from Europe,” Noelia says as we view the many doors. Each one is numbered by size, so customers can easily find something to fit. “They’re mostly from France and Italy. Some are from London. Some are from Germany and Spain too.”

Globe Trotters

Prior to the pandemic Noelia and her brothers, all architects, traveled the globe looking for architectural artifacts to bring back to their locations in California, Italy, Argentina and of course, Jersey City. “One of my brothers found this place,” she says of the Beacon Avenue showroom. “My brother said, ‘This place is amazing. It’s so close to New York City. The buildings here are amazing, though some of the doors are terrible.’” Noelia says that a lot of the most beautiful Jersey City brownstones, as well as townhouses in neighboring Manhattan, were renovated years ago to include cheap big box doors.

“Maybe at some point the budget only allowed for something that was not so good,” she says. “We are trying to help the city return to the glory that it was at one time.”

Noelia Amighini

Manhattan to the Heights

When Amighini Architectural came to Jersey City 20 years ago it mostly worked with New York City clients. Noelia says, “It was Manhattan first, then Brooklyn, then Hoboken. Then Downtown Jersey City began to change, and now it’s here. We have a lot of clients right here in the Heights now. Our doors are going to add elegance to the neighborhood.” It’s not just brownstones that rely on Amighini to upgrade their curb appeal. One recent project included a church that needed to modernize but hoped to retain a classic look. Amighini Architectural can custom fit antique doors and create windows with safety glass for their clients whether they have an older home or a new building. Noelia shows me the workshop where items are repaired. “We have a lot of artisans and craftsmen that repair all of the details of each door,” she says as she points out a barely visible seem where a gouged piece of wood was fixed. “See the patch. We make each patch with the same wood. We don’t use new wood. We are green people. This is all reclaimed wood. We’re really conscious about that. We inherit the planet.”

Making the Magic

Noelia is driven by creativity as much as environmentalism. “When we do the demolition during the renovations, I don’t want to throw anything away. We can take some beams and items and we can assemble them together. It’s creative.” The Amighini siblings were raised to see the value in old things. “At dinner in other houses, I don’t know what they talk about, but we talked about doors,” Noelia says. “They all talked about working and traveling and demolition and all of that. I grew up listening. Even as a child I knew that I would be an architect.” She says that even as a kid, she could easily spot a fake. “Growing up around this, I know. I know if something has history or if it’s trying to look old. My grandfather taught me how to check from the time I was a child,” Noelia says, indicating he welding on a metal grate that separates a historic piece from a reproduction.

First and Last

She shows me her favorite door in the entire place. She says that the really old ones are heavy like petrified wood. “I like the balance of this door. I feel like the arch is elegant, and I love the height,” she says of the antique French castle door. “I feel the energy of these things.” “Once, a couple came in and they were looking for a door and trying to hurry. I said, ‘Take your time, because you are going to open this door so many times.’ It’s not a waste of time to take your time and I have all of the patience I need to make sure that you will be happy,” Noelia says. “We always say that we are a part of opening your home. It’s the first thing you do coming home, and the last thing you do when you leave.”—JCM