Proposed Store Signs for Towering FiDi Landmark Rejected as 'Too Darn Much'

Rendering shows some of the proposed signage for the Pearl Street (at Cedar Street) side of 70 Pine Street. Not included in the picture are the 28 decals proposed for the windows on Pearl Street. Rendering: Stephen Jacobs Group via Tribeca Trib

Seventy Pine Street is one of the city’s great Art Deco skyscrapers. A 66-story city landmark now being converted from offices to apartments, the $600-million project has cleared all its major hurdles before the Landmarks Preservation Commission. Just a seemingly simple one remains: Signage.

Late last month the developers, Rose Associates, sought approval of a master plan for the building's signs—the size, number, location and type for the retail spaces on the street and second-level floors. They presented their designs to the commission and, days earlier, Community Board 1’s Landmarks Committee.

It did not go well.

The developers say there will be three to five stores, with entrances on Pine, Pearl and Cedar Streets, and they proposed 69 signs: three 6-foot 10-inch-high vertical “blade” signs that project off the facade, 59 window decals, three five-foot-long illuminated signs behind windows, and five signs comprised of raised, brushed metal letters.

“It’s just too darn much,” remarked Landmarks Commissioner Michael Goldblum, following an April 19 presentation of the plan.

As an office building, most recently serving as the headquarters of the American International Group, the stores in 70 Pine Street generally had lobby—not street—entrances. So few signs had marred the appearance of the building’s limestone and granite facade. Now, with newly installed retail entrances off the street (replacing windows), there is little historical precedent to guide a signage plan. Nevertheless, this plan was overdoing it, critics on the commission and CB1 said.

“Given the respect that you’ve offered the rest of the building I can’t understand why you would splatter the ground floor, which is what most people will see,” CB1 Landmarks Committee co-chair Bruce Ehrmann told Cas Strachelberg, a preservation consultant who presented the plan to the committee. “I think it hurts your own cause with the building.”

“The building itself is a billboard, like the Woolworth Building,” said committee member Alice Blank. “You don’t need to have your name all over the place. It’s not in keeping with the beauty of this landmark.”

Both the CB1 committee and the Landmarks commissioners took particular issue with the two tall, three-sided blade signs that they said obscure the detail on the building’s corners. Seventy Pine is bounded by narrow streets that, they said, render the protruding blade signs unnecessary. And they called for reducing the number of decals.

Only the commission’s chair, Meenakshi Srinivasan, defended much of the plan, saying, “It’s a big building with large facades and I don’t think that the signage is going to detract from that.” But outnumbered, she relented.

“I think they need to come back with a revised master plan that incorporates our suggestions,” she said.

A spokesman for Rose Associates declined to comment.