Chandelier Antique Restoration Shop in Brooklyn: Lamp Doctor

The Lamp Doctor has a new home. After decades in Midwood, the Brooklyn lighting restorer moved on April 7, 2026 to 135A Huntington Street, Brooklyn 11231, in a former record store in Carroll Gardens. It is an antique restoration shop devoted to light fixtures and the metal around them: antique lamps with old silk wiring, crystal chandeliers, brass and bronze fixtures, and period hardware. Hours are Tuesday to Saturday, 10 am to 5 pm, and it is closed on Sunday and Monday.

According to a July 2026 profile in the Star-Revue, Carol Romeo and her late husband, Peter, started the business in the 1970s and ran it for many years in Midwood before the move north to Huntington Street. The shop is certified as a Women-owned Business Enterprise through the NYC Department of Small Business Services and the move brought the workshop, the lampshade stock and the vintage chandeliers for sale under one new roof.

The resume is bigger than the storefront. The same profile mentions restoration work for landmark buildings in Manhattan, the Armory in Harlem and a building next to the World Trade Center. The shop's own site says it is listed in the New York City Landmarks Conservancy guide for landmark lighting restoration, and its press page collects coverage from WABC-TV Eyewitness News, News 12 Brooklyn, Newsday, the Daily News and BKLYN Magazine.

The restoration page calls one job a specialty: replacing the old silk wiring in antique fixtures. Cloth-insulated wire was standard in early electric lamps and chandeliers, and after decades it frays and crumbles inside the arms, which is a real fire risk. Rewiring a multi-arm chandelier means threading new wire through every curved arm without scratching the finish, and replacing sockets that have cracked or lost their springs.

Brass and bronze get a full treatment. Pieces are disassembled, polished and lacquered, so the finish lasts instead of tarnishing again within months. Painted fixtures, such as a wrought-iron fixture or an enamelled lantern, can be stripped and repainted to their original finish. The result is a fixture that is safe to use every day and looks like the period piece it is, rather than an old lamp with a new cord hanging from it.

Silk lampshades are the other half of the shop. A rewired antique lamp often arrives with a shade that has split along its panels or browned from decades of bulb heat, and the shop sells silk shades to finish the job. Bring the lamp itself when choosing one, with its harp and finial, so the shade can be matched to the height and shape of the base rather than guessed from a measurement written on a scrap of paper.

For crystal chandeliers, the shop says it fully disassembles each fixture and cleans every crystal part inside and out. That is the difference between a restored chandelier and one that has only been dusted on a ladder: the prisms, pendants and bobeches come off, the frame is cleaned and checked, and everything goes back with the original pattern intact. Missing crystals can be matched from stock, and the shop also sells vintage chandeliers if a fixture is past saving.

Before bringing a chandelier in, take photographs from below and from each side, and count the crystals on each arm. Pack the prisms separately in a box lined with towels. Out-of-town customers can ship pieces to the shop, which the homepage explicitly invites, so a family chandelier from another city does not have to wait for a road trip to Brooklyn.

The work is not limited to lights. The restoration page lists antique hardware too, including doorknobs, window pulls and fireplace andirons, and the polishing page extends to brass railings and headboards. In brownstone Brooklyn that is especially handy: a renovation that strips a house back to its original detail often turns up tarnished knobs, rim locks and fireplace pieces that deserve the same care as the light fixtures.

Walk-ins are welcome during regular hours, so you can bring a lamp or a box of hardware in without booking, and the staff can look it over at the counter and talk through whether it needs rewiring, polishing, new crystals or all three. The site does not publish prices, so the cost is quoted when the staff see the piece. Saturday is open, which makes it the easiest day for anyone who works weekdays, while Sunday and Monday are closed.

Huntington Street sits close to the Smith–9th Streets station on the F and G lines, with Carroll Street station a little further north. From the shop, Court Street is a short walk away. Frankies 457 Spuntino, at 457 Court St., is a long-running Italian restaurant from chefs Frank Castronovo and Frank Falcinelli, and it makes an easy lunch after a drop-off.

Keep walking toward the water and you reach Lucali, at 575 Henry St., the candlelit pizza restaurant that opened in 2006. Between the two, the streets of Carroll Gardens are lined with brownstones whose front gardens give the neighborhood its name, and many of their parlor floors still hang the kind of antique fixtures that end up on the Lamp Doctor's bench.

Address: 135A Huntington Street, Brooklyn, NY 11231, Carroll Gardens, open there since April 7, 2026. Hours: Tuesday to Saturday, 10 am to 5 pm, closed Sunday and Monday, walk-ins welcome. Services: rewiring including antique silk wiring, socket replacement, brass and bronze polishing and lacquering, crystal chandelier cleaning, painted finishes, antique hardware and brass polishing, silk lampshades and vintage chandeliers for sale.

Best for: a brownstone chandelier with crumbling wiring, a pair of tarnished bronze sconces, or a set of original doorknobs from a renovation. Bring photographs of how a chandelier was hung and every loose crystal. Ask the Karpo APP for a table on Court Street or a pizza on Henry Street, and the repair errand becomes a Carroll Gardens afternoon.