LPC issues favorable advisory report for Prospect Park Vale wayfinding, urges material and siting refinements

The Landmarks Preservation Commission on May 6 issued a favorable advisory report for a new wayfinding and interpretive signage family proposed for The Vale (often styled "The Veil") in Prospect Park, while asking the Prospect Park Alliance to refine materials, color choices and locations and to coordinate broadly with Parks and the Public Design Commission.

The proposal from the Prospect Park Alliance and wayfinding consultant 212 would install 22 signs in the Vale, including a freestanding angled entrance information panel, four localized maps, directional arrow posts, stewardship panels, two interpretive panels and two sizes of place-making banners on roadway and pedestrian poles. Materials would include metal headers, high-pressure laminate map panels, and Sintra panels for short-lived promotional graphics. The Alliance said the system is intended to be coherent, easy to maintain, and visually accessible while subordinate to the landscape.

Testimony at the hearing included concerns that the volume and variety of signage could "bring urban cacophony into The Vale" and that some banners and bright graphics risked transforming a landscape designed to "imitate nature" into an urban billboard. Jeremy Woodoff of the Victorian Society said historic parks relied on rustic, low-profile signs and urged the commission to require a resubmission to better fit the Olmstedian character; the Historic Districts Council also urged modesty in scale and quantity.

Commissioners generally supported the concept of improved wayfinding in a landscape where visitors get lost and where inconsistent, decades-old signage is already present, but they asked the Alliance to consider less visually prominent materials, further coordinate with the Parks Department's regulatory signage, and cluster or reduce signs where possible. "The siting of the signs is very intentional," the Alliance said, but commissioners requested the Alliance test the system in the Vale before expanding parkwide and to submit revised material and color options with staff-level comments.

Because Prospect Park is a Scenic Landmark, LPC's report is advisory and will be forwarded to the Public Design Commission; the LPC report recommended a favorable report but explicitly called for refinements to materiality, color palette, location clustering and coordination with Parks Department regulatory signs.