Complying with an order from the Landmarks Preservation Commission, the Equinox Gym at 97 Greenwich Avenue in Greenwich Village today took down large advertising signs on the exterior of its three-story building that had been erected recently.

The site, formerly occupied by the popular Greenwich movie theater, is in the Greenwich Village Historic District, and the signs had been widely criticized as advertecture, which is prohibited in historic districts.

In an article in yesterday's edition of The New York Post by Jennifer Gould Keil, a spokesman for the gym "assured neighborhood groups that the building hadn't been damaged by the multi-story billboards."

The article said that "the gym's bottom line took a $65,000 hit - the cost of putting up and taking down the signs."

An article by Patrick Hedlund in the January 6-12, 2010 edition of The Villager said that Equinox's action in putting up the large advertising signs on both the Greenwich Avenue and West 12th Street sides of the building was termed "a highly egregious flouting of the law" by Andrew Berman, executive director of the Greenwich Society for Historic Preservation.

The article said that Mr. Berman wrote to both the landmarks commission and the Department of Buildings urging them "to send a strong message that such clear and unambiguous violations of landmarks and buildings rules will not be tolerated."