The Pepsi sign in Gantry Plaza State Park, overlooking the East River in Long Island City, Queens.

.... by midcentury a proliferation of bad Modern architecture had caused popular sentiment to sour. The preservation movement was born from a desire to save endangered architectural treasures from the fate of a lost Pennsylvania Station but also from a growing resistance to an accelerating trend of ever greater density and height.

Such concerns have gradually led the commission to designate whole neighborhoods, to tie up properties where bigger buildings might sprout and to grant landmark status to places that were not architecturally distinguished but culturally and socially meaningful and deserving of commemoration, like the Stonewall Inn on Christopher Street.

Designating Stonewall a landmark last year was a no-brainer and a declaration of civic pride. But it also showed how, absent additional regulations, the city’s landmark law had become a catchall. As a safeguard of architecture of aesthetic significance, it clearly wasn’t intended to enshrine what looks like the current Home Depot picture window or brick veneer on the inn’s facade. The law doesn’t prevent the nail salon next to Stonewall from expanding into the inn. It doesn’t dictate use.

So, this is why, if the commission designates the Pepsi-Cola sign, it will in effect be protecting the medium, but not the message. Yes, I know, what is the sign, if not the neon lettering that spells out the brand name? But technically the Pepsi name is content, which the law doesn’t enforce.

Fortunately this apparent Alice in Wonderland conundrum poses no imminent threat, since Pepsi entered a while back into a binding agreement not to change the sign. A landmark designation in effect would reinforce the agreement and underscore the city’s fondness for a pop-culture artifact.

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BENJAMIN NORMAN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES mobile.nytimes.com

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