Are awnings and banners awful eyesores or useful necessities? Red Rooster Group’s take on the Flatiron’s District’s Master Improvement Plan.

Red Rooster Group is active in improving our world, creating a better city and safer and more livable streets, examining the issues in the world around us. Since our office is on 23rd Street and Madison Avenue, the heart of the Flatiron District, we are interested in the what the local BID had in mind for the area, so we took a look at the Plan, prepared by Starr Whitehouse, landscape architects. Here is what I wrote to them.

---

As a business owner on 23rd Street, I was reviewing your Master Plan for the Flatiron District and was quite impressed. I think that the guidance and recommendations you provide will create much needed improvements in the area. However, I would like to point out two aspects that I believe require further consideration.

As a designer, I can fully appreciate the concept of “cleaning up” the streets to convey a less cluttered, more unified streetscape. So I can understand your suggestion to clean up the clutter of awnings on 23rd Street. (My office is on 23rd between Madison and Park Ave South between the Radio Shack Awning and the new Press awning.) However, I urge you to reconsider the role that awnings play on a practical and communal level.

First, they provide needed shelter. The front door to our building is locked, and there are many days when it is raining (as it does in New York), and the Radio Shack awning provides some cover as I get the key into the lock. Also, I often go outside to pick up something for lunch and can take refuge under the awning when it is raining (I and I am sure I am not alone in these two matters given the abundance of both small, locked building on the south side of 23rd Street as well as the abundance of food venues).

Awnings are useful cover in inclement weather, as you can witness people huddling under them when it’s raining. In fact, the awnings lining the south side of 23rd Street are very much used as cover by many to get to the two subway stations on either ends when it’s raining.

My second point about the value of awnings relates to their social function as facilitators of street life. In addition to awnings being a place for people to gather under in inclement weather, they provide mini focal points for street life, fostering discussion among people that may not otherwise meet. I think that Jane Jacobs would agree that awnings signal a vibrant street life. Compare the vitality of streets with awnings to those that don’t and you will typically find a more robust street life.

Thirdly, awning aid in navigation since they are dominant features on the street — I can tell a cab driver to stop at the black Radio Shack awning that can be seen from a half a block away.

This is of course, in addition to their function of advertising the existence of businesses (which is what the BID supports). By the way, I say this as a service business with an office on a third floor with no connection a business with an awning.

I am not by any means arguing that awnings don’t clutter the block or are ugly, crass and commercial, however absent them, I believe we lose something of the vital nature of the street and the district.

Regarding poles that hold up the awnings. Granted these do take up sidewalk space, which can block traffic, which is not good. I also noticed that they are used as a bike racks. Given the dearth of bike racks in New York in general and 23rd Street in particular, that is not a bad thing. Perhaps instead of banning awnings, there are guidelines for where poles touch down on the sidewalk, or even designing them to hold more bicycles, serving as benches or other purposed to double their function.

In your recommendations for what gets adopted for 23rd Street, I would urge you to take these views into consideration. Perhaps there are other means of providing shelter and fostering a vital community.

Another issue I would like to comment on are banners. I find it ironic that you suggest eliminating the visual clutter of competing awnings and signs, only to replace them with banners that feature advertising on them.

The utilitarian and decorative functions of street lamps are marred with commercial messages that add no value to the neighborhood (especially since the banners don’t actually contain any information other than identifying the area as the Flatiron district and some advertising).

If the BID’s ultimate goal is to increase consumer awareness of the district as a shopping destination, it is misguided to think that eliminating awnings, which indicate the presence of businesses, and replacing them with banners with general advertising, will foster more street traffic. People respond more to the businesses they see, and not banners.

In fact, I would argue that the banners with advertising add to the confusion, and send the wrong message to the public that public space is sponsored by private entities. I find this trend scary and abhorrent. More and more of our public space is being sponsored by private corporations (Bloomberg had even suggested that subway stations could be sponsored by corporations). This is definitely a step in the wrong direction and I would urge you to reconsider your recommendation to put up advertising banners throughout the district. I understand that this is a source of advertising for the BID, but I am sure that there are other, less obtrusive ways of bringing in revenue.

•  •  •

---