Zoning resolution prohibited apartment dweller from placing illuminated “Peace” sign in 17th floor window. In 2010 Brigitte Vosse placed an illuminated “Peace” sign in the window of her seventeenth-floor condo in The Ansonia at 2109 Broadway in the Upper West Side of Manhattan. The Department of Buildings fined her $800 for violating a zoning ordinance restricting illuminated signs in her neighborhood at heights above forty feet. Vosse argued that the City placed a content-based restriction on her speech, citing an exemption in the Zoning Resolution for flags, banners, or pennants of a civic, philanthropic, educational, or religious nature. Vosse also argued even if content-neutral, the regulation was an unreasonable “time, place, and manner” restriction on her speech.
