Untitled building now with more Untitled

A surprising number of readers pointed out the new Untitled signage on the three residential entrances of the recently branded building at 58-72 Avenue A between Fourth Street and Fifth Street.

The block letters arrived Friday on the newish awnings on the A, Fourth and Fifth Street sides...

The two-floor high "Untitled" sign arrived on the SE corner of Avenue A and Fifth Street back in the fall, setting off some speculation over the name. (Some people thought it had something to do with the bookstore Mast, the tenant in the corner space. It did not.)

Derby Copeland Capital bought the 6-story building for $64 million in the fall of 2022. The building is entering its second year of gut renovations, which has seen the conversion from prewar 1- and 2-bedroom units to 3-4-bedroom apartments with asking rents as high as $10,000 per month. 

The building's previous market-rate tenants were not offered lease renewals (with a 90-day notice), and now only a handful of rent-controlled and stabilized tenants are still in residence. (Read more about the situation via this Hellgate piece.) 

This East Village building is now Untitled

Reporting by Stacie Joy 

Late this past Thursday afternoon, this two-floor high "Untitled" sign arrived on the SE corner of Avenue A and Fifth Street...

We fielded several reader queries about the sign. Given its placement (and despite its permanence), a few readers thought this might be related to an event at Mast, the bookstore-gallery in the corner retail space. 

Well, it has nothing to do with Mast. An employee there was just as confused and surprised as others, and they questioned the placement above the business. (And Untitled isn't out of the realm of possibilities for the name of a bookstore.)

Sources tell us this is now the name of the 6-story building here at 58-72 Avenue A between Fourth Street and Fifth Street, which an LLC purchased for $64 million last fall. 

Meanwhile, readers also noted another new detail in the building: A copy of David Hockney's "Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures)" recently arrived in the refurbished Avenue A lobby... (the painting sold in 2018 for more than the building cost... and to be clear, this is not the original)...

As previously reported, Ink on A was a casualty in the block-long building's storefronts ... and as previous commenters noted, the landlords are not offering lease renewals to market-rate residential tenants.

Several renovated apartments, now configured with up to four bedrooms (previously one and two) plus in-unit washer-dryer combos and split-unit AC, are currently on the rental market.