Your city and/or neighborhood should have guidelines governing this. Did you apply for a permit to build and your contractor a license to build, or did you seek approval through your covenant or city? If not, you might want to do this. It is better to get approval ahead of time. Check with your city planning commission; they should know whom to contact if need be.

I do not live in an historical neighborhood, but one of my sons does, and they have pretty strict guidelines. He is the 'president of their neighborhood group' and would not approve some plans his wife had for redoing their attic. LOLOL. I did not know if it was because he did not want to do it or it denigrated the integrity of the period of the house. :-)

We have a 1900 clapboard house, and shortened the windows in the kitchen. First we completely replaced the orignial windows with shorter ones. On the exterior of the house we built 5-piece panels between the original window stools and the new higher stools, visually maintaining the bottom alignments with the existing windows on the house. These panels ended up being about 18" tall and the width of the windows, and we painted them to match the house and trim. This way we didn't have to patch any of the clapboard siding. I think you'd be able to use the same idea on a brick house -- make it a design detail! I don't see why getting permits would be difficult unless you have some kind of historic limitations in your town.

Sorry I don't have a picture.

We have an 1888 Victorian - I know about the preservation committees!

So, on my home office we had two casement windows. We lined the window in black, insulated it well, sprayed it for moisture, caulked it and drywalled it in.

From the exterior it's the same, the inside you'd never know.

We did it in one evening. Nothing to worry about with bricking in, etcetera.

Hmm. Contact a mason first. You will undoubtedly have trouble finding matching bricks. They don't make them the same way anymore. Size will be different, also. I don't know anyone who would recommend the insulate and drywall solution, nor do I think it will pass code. Good luck. re-post the solution, I'm very interested.
Len

We left the deeper window the way it was, dropped down behind the kitchen counter in our stone house. I use the well created to grow plants it works beautifully. Would that work for you?

The neat trick is to leave the window and cover it up on the inside. So, from the outside, it is still a window and from the inside it is sheetrock.

1. Clean the glass.
2. Install window shade like mini blinds and close them.
3. Cover the inside of the window with sheetrock, painting the side facing the window black.
4. Done.