By Gus Saltonstall
Tip Top Shoes, the iconic Upper West Side shoe store, is replacing its longtime sign on the front of the business.
Lester Wasserman, the fourth-generation owner of the store at 155 West 72nd Street, along with designer Alexander King, presented their plans for the new sign to Community Board 7’s Preservation Committee at the end of July.
The store has to meet with the CB7 committee because it is located within the Upper West Side Historic District.
King told the committee Wasserman brought him in to give the sign, which was installed sometime in the early 2000s, “more character.”
“Fast, quick vinyl signs not only don’t look the part, but they also don’t last,” King said of the current sign. “A lot of business owners are going back to signs from the 1940s all the way to the 1980s, back to when craftsmen were designing them.”
The new sign will incorporate elements from past Tip Top Shoes signs in the 1970s and 80s.
All the typography on the new sign will be hand done, and King pointed to Barney Greengrass’ sign as a good comparison for the style.
Here is the rendering of what Tip Top Shoe’s new sign will look like.
The new sign will also include the store’s slogan, “Where Your Feet Are in Good Hands.”
“I think it will do 72nd Street quite a bit of justice when the sign returns to its old form, and hopefully other retailers follow suit and make their signs look as good as ours,” Wasserman told the CB7 committee. “I don’t say it braggingly, I say that genuinely.”
The subject of 72nd Street resulted in the following exchange after Wasserman’s remark.
“That depends on the new design of 72nd Street,” one committee member said in reference to the ongoing two-way bike lane proposal.
“We’re not going to discuss that now,” the committee head quickly responded as a few laughs broke out in the background.
The committee members all spoke positively about the redesign of Tip Top Shoes and voted unanimously in support of the changes.
Next, Tip Top Shoes will have to secure permission of the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission to make the changes.
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They were just named one of the top 25 clothing stores in the city by The Times.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/07/30/style/best-clothes-stores-nyc.html?unlocked_article_code=1.4VA.mjGf.eJnjfxWFHzbR&smid=nytcore-ios-share
Please clean up the front of the store as well.
Is this really worth posting ???? Not really ! Stick to important odeas !
Yikes! Perhaps you should start your own online periodical so that you can post whatever you’d like. Don’t worry. I’m sure the comments will be mostly positive.
Totally agree
Continuing the West 72nd street bias at WSR
What is the matter with people? What bias?
WSR, you haven’t done anything wrong! Keep up the good work.
It’s not “bias”, for crying out loud. It’s recognition. W. 72 St is the most interesting street on the UWS
A new sign at a store on 72nd street is the most interesting thing on the UWS? This is small towm news that would even the editors at the Council Grove Republican in Kansas would most likely pass on.
Can we get back to “real news” and get an update on the escalator at Trader Joes?
Which is just off W 72 St, and equally frivolous…
It’s nice to see a business owner being thoughtful about how their advertising affects the character of the neighborhood.
Is that leftover stock from the Goodwill store in space above TipTop? They might want to clean that up before installing the new sign. Or does that have to be voted on as well? 🙄
Goodwill was in the building next door.
Yikes, it wasn’t the cleanest store to begin with so I can’t imagine what condition things are in after sitting there for 4 years. 😳
Kinda crazy that a business owner needs to present a sign to the historical committee. Talk about red tape!
Sounds like in Russia. You need permission from the communist party . Insane !!!!!
It doesn’t work any different. Go back to the 70s version.!
Why are the comments so negative and dismissive? I think the new (old) sign looks terrific!
Are you new here? The WSR comment forums are one of the grumpiest parts of the Internetz!
Pardon me. I believe you meant the Interwebs
Gosh! I’m old enough to remember when Harry’s was simply “Florsheim” and the vestibule housed a small glass display case of shoes within the vestibule. Nothing as large as Tip Top’s display case.
Your discussion of the effort to update the door front sign at Tip Top Shoes brought back fond memories. The store was opened. on the eve of America’s entry into World War II by a distant cousin, an old school shoe craftsman in exile from Germany by the name Richard Pfifferling. He could not only repair and sell shoes but actually make them. I believe he had that notable sign created by an artist and caricaturist named Wronklow whose zany cartoons appeared in the newly founded German-Jewish newspaper Aufbau (Reconstruction). The shop passed into the hands of the Wasserman family upon Richard’s untimely death.
Wonderful story, Frederic. Thanks for sharing it.
Please correct the name of the cartoonist who created the Tip Top sigh to Ludwig Wronkow.
Good luck with the Landmarks Preservation Committee! It’s unfortunate that a store owner has to deal with such bureaucracy.
The bike advocates that want the bike lane the owner is against want to get rid of them and historic district landmarking on the UWS.
Call me an old stick in the mud, but I’ll kinda miss the old sign.
It does seem like an awful lot of bureaucracy just to change the sign to something that’s not too different from what they have. Maybe this is a small piece of why it’s so hard to do business in the city? and why there are so many empty stores.
I like Harry’s but the shoe prices are quite expensive. It’s not a store for affordably priced shoes. They also carry less and less hard to fit sizes like wide widths.
W72nd has deteriorated greatly for many years. A street that used to have upscale Charivari and elite shoe and clothing stores and wonderful browsing opportunities not to mention Gracious Home nearby is now dirty garbage strewn block after block. Nothing to look at no joy in walking. We have to cross town to do anything meaningful. East 86th has everything you could ever need.
Yeah, if you like big-box chain beauty chains, junky clothing marts, and a defunct movie theater. Little that’s elite or original.
West 72nd certainly could use some work but it’s still a more interesting and quirkier walk than East 86th.
Actually, it’s an apples-to-oranges comparison because E86 retail is built into the base of large apartment buildings while W72 retail makes do with much smaller store footprints.