Glass business shines brightly in Allston-Brighton

· Linda Mishkin: Please tell us about the history of Stuart Glass.

· Butch Rosales: A father and son, Leo and Roger Driben, started Royal Glass Service in 1957. Roger’s middle name was Stuart. When the father, Leo, retired in 1988, Roger incorporated the business, renaming it Stuart Glass. That same year is when I started working here.

· LM: What were you doing when you started in this business?

· BR: I had been working as a glazier. I was living in Greenfield, Massachusetts, and decided to relocate to Boston. Roger was kind enough to give me a job. Then, after a couple of years, I was thinking about going out on my own.

I asked Roger what his plans were, and he told me that his children were all set and that he planned to offer to sell the business to any of the employees who were interested. So, I hung in there and worked hard knowing that there would be an option for me to own it some day. The offer came in 2001, and that is when I bought the business.

· LM: Did you alone buy it?

· BR: Yes. It was offered to two of us, but the other person decided not to go in on it. He stayed on working for me for a couple of years and then retired.

· LM: A while ago, I interviewed the owner of the barber shop next door. The owner there is new, but the business has been here for a long time. What are some of the other longstanding businesses in this immediate area?

· BR: Some businesses have come and gone, but some have been here a while. The Stockyard has been here a long time. Meineke has been here a while. I remember working on that storefront when they first opened.

· LM: During your years here in Brighton, have you seen much of a change in the glass business?

· BR: There is not a lot of new construction. We generally focused on repair work to preserve the old-style architecture. After I became owner and as new businesses opened, we also got into installing storefronts. So, that was something that I added to the business.

Roger had preferred the service calls where we would deal with landlords and realty companies, mostly doing glass repair and replacement. There was enough work to keep us busy.

Another area of the business we are in now involves shower enclosures. There is a lot of that type of business. Especially in this economic climate, we have to be able to adapt, and I think we have done that quite well. So far, so good.

· LM: I walk by this store mornings when I walk to work, and it always seems to be busy.

· BR: People know the storefront. We have customers with a range of needs from replacing small picture-frame glass and screen replacements to large jobs.

· LM: Have you seen changes in the types of glass that customers want?

· BR: There are more requests for specialty glass. There is more variety now in textured glass. Recently, there has been more demand for glass tiles.

Picture a mirror, which is glass with a backing; now there are different types of backing, different colors. Those pieces of glass can be cut to different-size tile shapes.

Frameless shower enclosures using heavy glass is popular now. Frameless glass is now used in storefronts and malls, both interior and exterior.

There are pet-friendly door and window screens now. The material is stronger and safer because they won’t cut the paws of a pet.

Another fairly recent change is to have glass doors or windows with either electric or mechanical shades built into them. Some use an LCD crystal within the glass.

We install a lot of different types of glass that we get from our suppliers. We have in stock a variety of glass that we cut for such things as tabletops and mirrors.

· LM: Do you create some of the textured glass I see around here in the shop?

· BR: We have suppliers who create most of that. But, we do some sand-blasted pieces here. We can sand-blast designs that give a frosted look to the glass surface.

· LM: How many employees do you have?

· BR: It fluctuates. I have a steady crew of four or five. I have one guy who is semi-retired, but wants to keep busy. So, he works on a variety of projects.

As needed, I sometimes hire subcontractors for big jobs. These are people I have worked with over the years and know and trust their work.

Some own glass companies located in the western part of the state. They will come to Boston for a day or two for a particular job. It works out well.