Court declares art organization, not building owner, owns artwork on exterior wall of SoHo historic district building. In September 2004, Judge Deborah A. Batts allowed the Board of Managers of Soho International Arts Condominium to proceed with its Fifth Amendment takings claim against the City, pending an inquiry as to who owned the well-known minimalist sculpture by artist Forrest Myers that had been attached to 599 Broadway since 1973. (See CityLand’s past coverage here.)

The City argued that 599 Broadway was the current owner of the artwork because City Walls, Inc., a non-profit organization that played a significant role in financing and installing the three-dimensional structure, had abandoned the artwork when it ceased to function as a corporation. In the alternative, the City argued that 599 Broadway had obtained title through adverse possession. (more…)

Under the proposal, the SoHo sculpture would be raised, allowing ad panels below. Image courtesy of Van Wagner.

Compromise calls for SoHo art to coexist with advertising.

On April 24, 2007, Landmarks approved a plan that will allow The Wall, a sculpture by Forrest Myers, to be re-affixed to the Houston Street exterior of the building at 599 Broadway. The location will be 18 feet, four inches above the place that it occupied from 1973 until 2002. Separated by a 15-foot “buffer zone,” as the building’s owner described it, four advertising panels, eight by eighteen feet, will occupy the area beneath the sculpture. The compromise included a proposal to illuminate The Wall at night under a plan to be designed by lighting expert Leni Schwendinger, acclaimed for the lighting of Coney Island’s Parachute Jump.

At the hearing, the owner’s attorney Michael Sillerman presented elevations comparing the art piece’s original location to its proposed raised position, arguing that the proposal would enhance sight lines of Myers’ art. Sillerman also provided views of the sculpture and the proposed ad panels along Houston, where the ad panels seem dwarfed by neighboring full-building- wall ads. The materials also emphasized the size of the ad panels compared to standard billboards and the overall size of Myers’ sculpture, which will occupy an 88-foot by 86-foot area. (more…)

Owner of 599 Broadway applied to Landmarks for permission to remove three-dimensional structure on wall. In 1973, a three-dimensional structure created by artist Forrest Myers was bolted to outside support braces on the northern wall of 599 Broadway at the intersection of Houston and Broadway, within the newly designated SoHo-Cast Iron Historical District, at the intersection of Houston and Broadway. In 1997, after an engineer recommended that the northern wall’s braces, upon which the artwork was bolted, be internalized, the owner applied to the Landmarks Preservation Commission for a certificate of appropriateness to remove the artwork permanently.

In October 2000, following public testimony from the owner, the owner’s engineer, Forrest Myers, the Director of the Museum of Modern Art PS1, and the art critic Eleanor Hartley, Landmarks unanimously denied the application. Landmarks found that the structure was a highly acclaimed work of art regarded as the gateway to SoHo, and that its removal would adversely change the District’s historic character. The decision noted that Forrest Myers was one of the pioneer artists that had transformed SoHo into a recognized center of contemporary art. (more…)