Award Locksmith & Hardware sits at 115 E 96th St in New York and works with people well beyond that block. The shop covers Guttenberg, Edgewater, West New York, Cliffside Park, Fairview, Weehawken, and North Bergen, which means a good stretch of the area across the river counts as regular territory too. A locksmith that spans city blocks and river towns in the same breath is a little unusual, but keys and locks do not care about borders. Whether someone needs a spare key cut for a new apartment in North Bergen or a stuck deadbolt looked at on E 96th St, the same shop handles it. That range matters when you are trying to find somebody who actually knows your type of lock instead of guessing at it.
Most of the hands-on work, including key copying and deadbolt repair, happens right at the storefront. That is where the key machines, blanks, and tools live, so bringing the lock or the key in tends to get the clearest answer. Door repair and similar jobs often need a look in person anyway, since a door that will not latch could be the frame, the hinges, or the strike plate, and nobody can tell which from a phone description alone. For lockouts, or any job that really needs someone to show up at your location, the move is to call first and walk through the specifics, like what kind of door it is, what the lock looks like, and whether a key broke off or a cylinder is jammed.
The reasons people from these towns pick up the phone tend to repeat themselves. A lock change comes up a lot, usually right after a move, when nobody wants to trust the locks a previous tenant may still have keys to. A key that will not turn in the cylinder is another common one, often a sign of a worn key or a lock that has not been lubricated in years. Doors that will not latch right point to door repair territory, sometimes just a loose strike plate, sometimes a frame that has shifted. And then there is the simple, frustrating moment of being locked out, whether it is an apartment door in Fairview or a storefront gate in Edgewater that will not budge.
Rekeying is worth knowing about separately from a full lock change. Rekeying means the existing lock hardware stays in place, but the inside pins get swapped so old keys no longer work and new ones do. It is often faster than replacing the whole lock and makes sense for anyone who wants new keys without tearing out hardware that still works fine mechanically. For someone who just moved into Cliffside Park or West New York and wants peace of mind without replacing every lock on the door, rekeying is usually the more practical route, and it is one of the services the shop handles alongside full lock changes and deadbolt work.
Being open 24 hours changes things for people outside the immediate blocks around the shop. A lock problem at an odd hour in Weehawken or North Bergen is not a smaller emergency just because it happened farther from E 96th St. The shop treats a late call from across the river the same as one from a neighbor walking in off the sidewalk. That matters most for lockouts, since nobody plans to get locked out of their own apartment, and it tends to happen at the least convenient hour. Round the clock availability also covers safes, for anyone dealing with a stuck combination dial or a safe that will not open on a schedule that fits business hours.
A little prep on your end goes a long way before you call. Have the address ready, a description of the lock or door in question, and a sense of what is actually wrong, whether that is a key snapped off in the cylinder, a deadbolt that will not throw, or a door that swings but will not catch. For key copying, bring the original key with you, since the shop cuts from the physical key rather than a description of it. The more specific the details up front, whether you are calling from Guttenberg, Fairview, or right there on E 96th St, the easier it is to figure out what the job actually needs before anyone even looks at the lock in person.