The City Reliquary’s show celebrating Stanley Wisniewolski’s eccentric oversize styrofoam icons that once accessorized many Williamsburg storefronts is just the type of quaintly doting showcase of local obscura I’ve come to love about the Reliquary. Thanks to a neighborhood resident who loved the character Wisniewolski’s sculptures gave to storefronts so much that she took the initiative and time to research them, Karen Hudes, a Brooklyn writer, found out the hoisted sculptures were painted styrofoam that had succumbed to the elements after their creator passed away.
I was attracted to a sketch of Grand-Metro Street Improvements by Brooklyn Union Gas and the Saint Nicholas Neighborhood Preservations and Housing Corporation that hung on the wall, prominently featuring Wisniewolski’s icons hanging from storefronts and a neighborhood pennant he also designed. Wisniewolski had worked at Saint Nicholas in an artistic capacity in the 70s and 80s, and was able to provide a distinctive design element for Williamsburg’s retail strips. Many stores hung his three-or-four foot three dimensional mobiles next to their signs for decades: a hammer still hangs outside the Crest hardware store on Metropolitan Avenue.
I spoke with the curator, Karen Hudes, about her inspirations. She noticed the icons when she moved to the neighborhood in the 1990s and was spurred to find out more about them as their numbers dwindled. A cigar icon, hanging from the ceiling at the Reliquary, captured Hudes’ eye for looking intriguingly old (I would say it looks almost deco). It turned out St Nicholas still had several of his icons in their basement, and the city’s Municipal Archive had pictures of many others. I found her research and exhibit to be an inspiration for anyone who’s ever had the passing interest to research a design element or relic of a bygone era seen around town.
I also spoke with one of Wisniewolski’s daughters who was delighted that Karen had taken an interest in her father’s work. Particularly notable at opening night was the lively mix of older longtime Williamsburg residents and the younger artsy urban history wonks, mingling in the gallery and pouring out into the backyard. It turns out the cigar had a reputation of being vaguely phallic, and made a popular picture background among longtime neighborhood residents.
The Vanishing Icons of Metropolitan Avenue: A History of Williamsburg’s Handmade Shop Signs from the 1980s runs through mid-July at the City Reliquary in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. It showcases recovered sculptures and pictures of storefronts decorated with Stanley Wisniewolski’s design elements. Looking at the exhibit’s website, the icons don’t really pop as much as the newer high saturation color plastic lettering that many stores pictured now use. But imagining a Williamsburg past when a painted styrofoam sign would really catch your eye reminds us of the details of the built environment that we take for granted, sometimes even after they have vanished from view.
The City Reliquary Museum
370 Metropolitan Ave
Brooklyn, NY 11211
Call 718-782-4842 for opening times.
Jesse Mintz-Roth is a practicing city planner, originally from Berkeley, who now lives in Fort Greene. As with all review and opinion pieces posted on Urban Omnibus, the views expressed are those of the author only and do not reflect the position of Urban Omnibus editorial staff or the Architectural League of New York.
