Dumbo Architecture

The New York Times explains why some historic districts are missing the brown street signs. (They colored them “terra cotta” because they thought that color would blend well with any background). However as many as 37 districts lack the distinctive brown “historic district” street signs, out of a total of 104 districts and 16 district extensions. The city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission designates the districts but they do not pay for the signs. The Dumbo neighborhood won its historic desigation in January 2008. However, three and a half years later, Dumbo still does not have these signs.

According to the article:

The signs, where they exist, are paid in part by a nonprofit organization, the Landmarks Preservation Foundation, that works with the commission to underwrite historical markers.

Elisabeth de Bourbon, a spokeswoman for the commission, said the signs do not come automatically as soon as a historic district is designated. “There’s nothing that happens if they don’t get in touch with us,” she said. “We don’t proactively go into neighborhoods to install signs.”

Though some community groups have not yet informed the Landmarks Preservation Commission that they are missing the signs, others, including Douglaston Hill, Dumbo and the extension to the already-designated Greenwich Village, say they haven’t seen any progress even after making the request.

Apparently, the neighborhood must raise most of the money for the signs themselves. The foundation grants each historic district $400 for the signs, which cost $55 each to manufacture, according to the commission.

According to privately run Historic Districts Council, “the initial signs for the then-80-plus historic district were funded by an anonymous donor with the intention that the City would provide appropriate signage as new districts were designated. This was agreed-upon but failed to be kept in practice, and unfortunately now, communities are responsible for providing funds for their own street signs, often through discretionary city council or private funding. This strikes us as a rather sad state of affairs, quite like asked to pay to print your diploma – but we suppose that happens too.”

Based on this, the neighborhood should contact City Councilman Stephen Levin to set aside funding for Dumbo’s new signs.

As one commenter in the NY Times article states, “The Department of Transportation is in the process of changing all City street signs from all-caps to signs with only the first letter capitalized. One would hope that the Landmarks Preservation Commission could coordinate with this fellow City agency to have the terra cotta-type street signs put up in historic districts currently without them at the time that DOT would be replacing the green signs regardless. This would, in theory, save DOT the cost of manufacturing green signs that aren’t needed while also providing these districts with the special signs they desire.” However, we’ve started spotting the new DOT signs in certain areas of Dumbo:

(Photo courtesy of Josh Derr).

More history about the brown historic signs from Historic Districts Council after the jump:
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