New Life for a Retired Brooklyn Icon, the Kentile Floors Sign?

The Gowanus Alliance wants to dust off the iconic Kentile sign and display it in a playground in Gowanus.

by Seán Devlin

01/10/2017 2 minute 0

The beloved late Brooklyn icon the Kentile Floors sign could be resurrected in Gowanus.

The Gowanus Alliance revealed via an Instagram post the start of a campaign to erect the sign in the Under the Tracks Playground, beneath the elevated subway train tracks on 10th Street near 3rd Avenue.

The group hopes to place the letters of the sign on 10-foot-high planters in the newly refinished park, the Brooklyn Paper reported. Renderings by Loci Architecture show the bright red signs amid concrete and greenery. The Gowanus Alliance hopes to present its plan at Community Board 6 in the next month or so.

The Kentile Floors sign, located atop a warehouse at 9th Street and 2nd Avenue for 65 years, stood over Gowanus until 2014. When it came down to make way for roof repairs, the Gowanus Alliance promised to find the sign a new home.

The news comes on the heels of recently revived plans to rezone parts of largely industrial Gowanus for residential construction.

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The sign is a relic of an older, more industrial Brooklyn. It was frequently photographed by straphangers on the F and G lines — and at least one Brooklynite even permanently tattooed it on her arm.