New York City’s storefront gates, like its fire escapes and stoops, are there but not quite there: the unnoticed wallpaper of New York at night. They have been battered by vandals and defaced by graffiti taggers. They have secured diamonds, handmade tortellini and other valuable commodities. They have provided the clattering soundtrack of dawn and dusk, the steel canvas of struggling artists, the most compelling evidence that the city does, indeed, sleep.

And now, on orders of the City Council, roll-down gates have joined the ranks of fatty foods and cigarette smoke: they have been legislated against, some right into extinction.

The Council voted on Monday to ban the kind of security gates that completely shield commercial storefront windows and doors from view  ones that resemble old-fashioned auto garage doors, with narrow horizontal slats that rise up like a steely sort of curtain  while permitting the kinds of gates common in suburban shopping malls that allow passers-by to see inside.

Along Court Street in the Carroll Gardens section of Brooklyn, a gentrifying commercial and residential strip in what remains an Italian stronghold, the gradual ban on solid gates  there are probably tens of thousands of them  was as well-received as a property tax hike. Not a single owner or manager who was interviewed was aware of the Council’s vote.