About Us

It All Began With a Squeegee, a Brush and a Good Work Ethic

Company Roots

Texas Window Cleaning Company’s roots can be traced to New York’s Ellis Island, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when the first group of Ehrenkranzes began arriving. As Austrian immigrants, they would join family who preceded them and were ushered into the window cleaning family trade, mostly concentrated in the New Jersey area.
Our father/grandfather, and Texas Window Cleaning Company founder, Henry Ehrenkranz grew up in New Jersey, at a time when mops and buckets were the main tools of the trade. By the age of 27, after three years studying business and law at Rutgers, and completing WWII service duties with the Coast Guard, he decided to head south to check out Houston’s warm weather and hospitable business climate.

He didn’t want to take over his own father’s lucrative Newark, New Jersey, company, ambitiously named the International Window Cleaning Company. He wanted to start something on his own. He arrived in Houston in 1947 and bought a struggling business from some Rice University students, called University Window Cleaners. 

He immediately changed the name to Texas Window Cleaning Company. His first company truck logo said “Call the Doctor of Panes” Texas Window Cleaning Company. Ironically, two hospitals, St. Luke’s Hospital and St. Joseph’s Hospital, were among Henry’s first clients. This was the beginning of Texas Window Cleaning Company’s long relationship with the Texas Medical Center and its affiliates. 

Knowing no one in Houston, Henry joined a local synagogue and met his wife, Marion Newman, also a first-generation American, whose family was from Russia.
Henry’s favorite annual charity event was to sell Christmas trees for the Optimist Club. Proceeds would support underprivileged children. “Dad loved the way Houston embraced him and he was always ready to give back. He thought of Houston as a melting pot of people and a land of opportunity even for a kid from New Jersey,” said Stan Ehrenkranz.

In 1976, after graduating from the University of Texas at Austin, Stan joined his father in the family business. Texas Window Cleaning Company would continue to grow along with Houston’s skyline.

With taller buildings and changing technology, in Houston Stan became a founding member of the International Window Cleaning Association, established in 1989. The IWCA is dedicated to making sure that safety standards continue to change and improve along with new technological breakthroughs.
In 2014, Stan’s son, Scott, joined Texas Window Cleaning Company following some years in the corporate finance world. Stan and Scott agreed it would be best that he worked for someone else before joining the family business.

By 2019, Scott’s industry-wide reputation and contributions to the International Window Cleaning Association made him the recipient of the coveted Ettore award that recognizes unselfish leadership in the window cleaning industry. He has also gone through a series of rigorous tests and hands-on training to become only the 13th person in IWCA history to hold a Building Access Safety Professional Certification.

“Just because we’ve been around for nearly half a century, we have no plans to rest on our past. We try every way possible to offer our customers all of the latest, safest, and most cost-effective standards our industry has to offer,” said Scott.

In a world of merging companies and long-distance ownership, Texas Window Cleaning Company remains a family-owned and -operated business. Our family attitude extends to our front-line cleaning professionals in the field, a stable staff incentivized by 401k’s and annual bonuses, company barbecues and long friendships.

Want to know more? Give us a call at 713-522-5570 and ask for Scott or Stan. We’d love to talk to you.