Case Study // 2026
A New York Stoop for the GLAAD NYC Gala at Cipriani 25 Broadway
The Brief & Challenge.
The GLAAD NYC Gala brought the organization’s community, honorees and sponsors to Cipriani 25 Broadway, the landmark banking hall at the foot of Manhattan. The evening honored Oscar-winning producer Bruce Cohen with the Vito Russo Award, was hosted by Ross Mathews, and drew a red carpet of performers and guests. The brief was a photo moment for the Hyundai-presented space that felt like New York rather than a backdrop: somewhere guests would climb onto, pose in, and post from, all night.
The room set the constraints. Cipriani’s marble, columns and painted ceiling do not forgive a flat scenic flat, so the build had to read as architecture up close. Load-in windows at a gala venue are short and shared with catering, production and the red carpet, which meant there was no time to build anything on site. And the piece had to carry a full rainbow floral treatment and working lighting without reading as a trade-show booth.
The Pop Solution.
We designed and fabricated a faux brownstone facade with a full stoop, built as a modular unit in our warehouse and delivered to Cipriani as a single photo moment. Guests walk up the steps, stand between the lanterns and pose in the doorway, so every photo has the same unmistakable New York frame behind it.
The facade. A warm-toned brownstone front with an arched transom over working double doors, two window units dressed with curtains and lit from inside, cornice and trim profiles cut on our CNC and laser, and a scenic paint finish that holds up to a photographer’s flash from a few feet away. Scenic carpentry, CNC cutting and scenic painting all happened in-house.
The stoop. A full-width set of steps with black iron-style railings and lantern sconces either side of the door, engineered to take a crowd of guests at once and to meet the floor cleanly on Cipriani’s stone.
The florals. Our floral team built two floor-to-cornice columns that run the Pride gradient from autumn reds and oranges at the top through yellows, greens and blues to purples and reds at the base, framing the doors and the windows and spilling into planters at the foot of the stoop.
Graphics and extras. Large format printing covered the sponsor and event graphics, and a matching curved counter in the same finish carried the Hyundai gifting station beside the moment.
Because the unit was pre-built, pre-fit and pre-dressed in our shop, the on-site work was assembly only: the facade, stoop, railings, lighting and florals were installed and show-ready within a few hours of the truck arriving. It is the same event fabrication process we run for every brand activation in the city, compressed into a gala load-in.
Core Fabrications
THE OUTCOME.
The stoop became the picture of the night. Guests queued to climb it, the Hyundai × NYC Gala lockup sat under every photo, and the moment traveled on social under its own tagline: “Pride, but make it a New York stoop.” For the venue team it was a single modular drop that arrived finished, went up in hours and struck just as fast.
For a sponsor, this is what a gala photo moment should do: put the brand in the background of every guest photo on a build people actually want to stand on.