Lord & Taylor prepares to say goodbye to Fifth Avenue

Verena Dobnik, Associated Press

Update

9:37 PST, Saturday 24 November 2018

NEW YORK (AP) – For generations, Lord & Taylor on Fifth Avenue has helped define Christmas in New York. It was the first department store in the city to turn its large sidewalk windows into displays of lively and theatrical parties. Tourists lined up to see them transformed into enchanted forests, spice-baked palaces and winter cityscapes.

In this Christmas season, the most remarkable decorations of the store are posters saying "everything must go".

Lord & Taylor plans to close its long-standing flagship product in January after a final outstanding sale. Next year, the 11-story Italian Renaissance style building covering a full block will be taken over by WeWork, the leasing company of workspaces.

About 40 Lord & Taylor branches will continue elsewhere. Viewers of holidays will have to appeal to competitors such as Saks, Bloomingdale's and Bergdorf Goodman, who have competed each year with Lord & Taylor for the best show.

"I am saddened that a symbol that we New Yorkers loved would soon be a thing of the past," said Karen Kriendler Nelson, a client of Lord & Taylor. She said that she had a lot of good memories including having her teenage face make up some of the scents on the ground floor. "What I remember most is the magic windows of Christmas, where we patiently queued so we could see them more closely, then we took the line again and again."

The demise of the Fifth Avenue store fits into the more global vision of a changing economy in which the physical retail has been hit by online sales.

In June, the Hudson's Bay Company, the Canadian giant owned by Lord & Taylor since 2012, announced the closure of several stores due to the company's "growing concentration on its digital potential and its commitment to improve profitability ".

WeWork and several investors are aiming to finalize the $ 850 million purchase of the Fifth Avenue building by the end of January.

Founded in 1826 in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, Lord & Taylor became one of the country's first department stores, led by two cousins ​​of English origin, Samuel Lord and George Washington Taylor. The store occupied several locations before it opened at Fifth Ave and 38th Street in 1914 in a royal house with an organ concert hall, elaborate dining rooms, a gymnasium, and a doctor's and dentist's office.

Lord & Taylor established himself as a pioneer of vacation windows adding movement to what had been static shows. In November 1938, during an unusually hot season, Lord & Taylor created a "blizzard" in the snow, using cornflakes and signs announcing "It's coming sooner or later!"

Saks Fifth Avenue imitates Lord & Taylor soon with his own screen that will please the crowd. Other department stores have followed. Over the years, the demonstrations have become a creative arms race, featuring the most lavish and fantastic holiday scenes that designers can imagine.

Recently, some of the elegant floors of the building looked like flea markets invaded by shoppers looking for bargains.

"If you're a retailer these days, you're eliminated if you do not make the goods better and cheaper," said Robert Greenstone, commercial real estate broker in New York. "And recently, Lord & Taylor was neither one nor the other.The merchandise was ordinary and could be found in other stores.

The city awarded the building the status of a historic monument in 2007, which means that some modifications made to the building by WeWork will have to be approved by the city.

The plans include a glass roof courtyard, the restoration of the balconies on the street facades and the enlargement of the store windows to their original size. The Lord & Taylor limestone shields and the cast iron emblems of the Fifth Avenue facade are also saved.