Sign Of The Times

Comcast, the out-of-towner wants to plant its name atop one of the city’s signature skyscrapers.

Comcast, which last year bought General Electric’s remaining 49 percent stake in NBCUniversal, applied for a “certificate of appropriateness” from the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission to replace G.E.’s 24-foot-high initials on 30 Rockefeller Plaza. G.E., now based in Fairfield, Conn., has long had a presence in New York.

Whether another name change will be embraced by the public is arguable. It’s been a quarter-century since the two glowing red letters were installed, yet many New Yorkers still refer to it as the RCA Building, after the company that founded the NBC network. The RCA name had capped the 70-story Manhattan landmark, which at 850 feet amounts to the city’s tallest billboard (the MetLife Building is considered second), for more than 50 years. When the original letters were first illuminated in 1937, they were hailed as the loftiest neon sign on the planet.

 

“The idea of changing it now to the Comcast Building,” said Carol H. Krinsky, a New York University art history professor and the author of “Rockefeller Center,” “strikes me the same way that the change to the G.E. Building name did: ‘I’m the new guy on the block and you are nothing anymore.’ ” 

As proposed, more modest 12-foot-high light-emitting diode signs that spell Comcast in white uppercase letters would be installed on the broader north and south limestone exteriors, crowned by 10-foot-high NBC peacock logos. A 17-foot-high peacock would appear by itself on the western façade more or less facing Philadelphia. Measured in overall square feet, the new signs would be slightly more compact than the existing G.E. signs.

“Nothing has been finalized yet,” Cameron Blanchard, a spokeswoman for NBCUniversal, said of the proposed renovations.

The new sign and marquee were approved on Thursday by the local community board. The preservation commission scheduled a hearing for Tuesday on Comcast’s request.

 

My thanks to the NYTimes for information in this posting.