BROOKLYN — The Dodgers may have left the borough years ago, but for one local artist, bringing the team's font to the skyline would be a home run.
With the 15-foot-tall red letters of the iconic Watchtower sign soon coming down after nearly 50 years in DUMBO, Susanna Briselli envisions a sign with the borough’s name in the Dodgers' font, lit up in blue using eco-friendly technology, including LED lights and perhaps solar-powered.
“It would reference the history of Brooklyn. A lot of that has to do with the Dodgers,” Briselli said. “It would be immediately recognizable, but use green technology.”
The Jehovah’s Witnesses are removing the Watchtower sign — though not its lattice framework — as the religious group moves its headquarters upstate to Warwick after selling nearly all of its Brooklyn real estate holdings, including the Watchtower building at 25-30 Columbia Heights for a reported $340 million to Kushner Companies, CIM Group and LIVWRK Holdings.
Credit: Flickr/Leo Newball, Jr.
The new owners — called Columbia Heights Associates — did not immediately respond to a request about whether they would consider the artist's vision.
Briselli first dreamed up the idea of a “Brooklyn” sign near the waterfront in the 1980s, when she and her husband lived on the Upper West Side and had artist studios at the South Street Seaport. Visitors would point to the Brooklyn Bridge and ask, “Where exactly is Brooklyn?” the artist recounted.
In the 1990s, the Philadelphia native and her Brooklynite husband — both of whom attended the Pratt Institute in the 1960s — moved to Park Slope, getting studio space in DUMBO.
By 2009, she felt she had more Brooklyn “cred” to take the next step with her idea, so she enlisted a team of contractors and engineers that included Artkraft Strauss, famous for its Times Square signs.
She proposed the project to then-Borough President Marty Markowitz, who supported the $1.5 million proposal for a free-standing sign near the waterfront. Perhaps it wasn't a surprise that Markowitz, Brooklyn's biggest cheerleader and a one-time Ebbets Field-goer, supported the idea. He gained notoriety for his homage to Kings County traffic signs reading: “Leaving Brooklyn: Fuhgeddaboudit” and “Leaving Brooklyn: Oy Vey!”
Markowitz connected her with then-Port Authority head Chris Ward, who seemed to want the sign installed at its container port at Pier 7, next to the southern end of Brooklyn Bridge Park, she said. Briselli thought a deal was imminent, but when Pat Foye took over the Port Authority under the Cuomo administration, all bets were off.
“The board loved it,” Briselli recalled, “but they said they didn’t know what they were going to do with the property. It’s valuable real estate, and everyone was saying it’s not part of their mission. They didn’t want to get involved [with the sign].”
Briselli said she then won over the Walentas family’s Two Trees Management, which supported the idea of turning the image into a billboard on its DUMBO building at 20 Jay St. But the city’s newly toughened zoning restrictions on billboards — which, for instance, prohibited outdoor advertising signs near highways — put the kibosh on the project.
Credit: Susanna Briselli
She tried to find another home for the project as a lit-up sign, writing to other DUMBO developers as recently as three years ago, including Kushner and LIVWRK, which own other property in the area.
Briselli eventually stopped pursuing the idea, but when she heard about the Watchtower sign coming down, she decided to make one last-ditch effort, penning a column last week about her idea in the Brooklyn Eagle.
The artist acknowledged that the original intent of the sign — to entice more visitors across the East River — was no longer applicable.
The sign has a different tenor now that Brooklyn has come into its own and embraced prominent public art, like Deborah Kass’ 8-foot OY/YO sculpture, commissioned by Two Trees for Brooklyn Bridge Park, which recently returned to the waterfront at the North Fifth Street Pier in Williamsburg.
But the "Brooklyn" sign was still relevant, Briselli thought.
“The sign itself would become an immediate icon much like the famous Hollywood sign, the St. Louis Arch, the London Ferris Wheel, the Eiffel Tower and various other highly recognizable constructions,” she wrote. “It would impart on the owners a reputation of civic spirit and commitment.”
She sent the column to Columbia Heights Associates but has yet to hear back. Briselli isn’t holding her breath, she said, since the owners would likely want a sign that brings in revenue.
“If the building didn’t want to pay for it, maybe that could be raised,” the artist offered. “If enough people in Brooklyn make noise maybe they will consider doing something civic-minded.”
