Alan Solomon is still at it.

Back in 2001, the preservation activist took on the quixotic mission to save two narrow 19th-century warehouses on Pearl Street in the upper reaches of the Financial District. Struggling against the city’s effort to bring development to Downtown in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, Solomon, a few other preservationists and the tenants living in the warehouses railed against the destruction of the last remnants of the city’s original dry goods market. In their place was to rise a $200-million hotel.

Now, long after the fervor has died down and virtually all of what they had sought to preserve was destroyed (the hotel has yet to be built), Solomon is pressing on, determined to tell the story of what was there, and what was lost.

Last month, Solomon and Roger Byrom, co-chair of Community Board 1’s Landmarks Committee, convinced the TF Cornerstone Corp., which owns the 50-story residential tower next to where the warehouses stood, to pay for the installation of three “heritage markers” of Solomon’s design at the corner of Pearl Street and Maiden Lane.

“We wanted to mark it in a way that would give people an idea of the significance of that area,” Solomon said, standing on the east side of Pearl Street, gazing at the sole survivor of the 2007 demolition: the façade of 211 Pearl Street, now a garage entrance. The signs, to be placed on the residential tower, would at least give visitors a sense of what was there, Solomon noted. “It’s about working to keep certain connections alive. This spot is sort of a link between different parts of the city’s history.”

The three signs, designed by Solomon and historian Paul Johnson, will each depict a different aspect of the neighborhood’s place in the city’s history. One will be dedicated to the warehouses themselves, built in the early 1830s and used primarily as wholesale outlets for dry goods merchants. A second will depict the Battle of Golden Hill, in January 1770 at nearby Gold and Platt Streets, which marked the first blood shed of the Revolutionary War. The third sign will be devoted to the area’s former geography—Pearl Street was once Manhattan’s southeastern shoreline.

Though the signs are a significant win for Solomon, he still holds out hope that a vestige of the former warehouse buildings will be returned to the block. Several pieces of 213 Pearl’s façade and another Pearl Street warehouse lie in storage.

All that’s missing, he said, is a well-financed and willing developer.

“There’s no guarantee it’ll be realized,” Solomon said of his efforts. “But if there’s value in it, you keep trying.”