Macy's Herald Square (New York City, New York)

 Macy's (department store chain), NRHP - National Register of Historic Places, interesting place, movie / film / TV location, 1902_construction, U.S. National Historic Landmark

11-story department store originally completed in 1902. Designed by DeLemos & Cordes, it was originally known as the R. H. Macy and Company Store, the flagship location of the famous department store. The Herald Square Macy's added a 322-foot, 19-story annex on the west end of the block in 1924, designed by Robert D. Kohn. The expansion led Macy's to bill itself as the "World's Largest Store" and occupied nearly the entire block - the sole exceptions being two tiny plots at the northwest and southeast corners, which refused to sell. In 1925, William Lawrence Bottomley designed a Spanish room for the department store. The building's 2.2 million square feet made it the world's largest department store from 1924 until 2009, when the South Korean chain Shinsegae opened a store of nearly 3.16 million square feet in Busan.

The company was founded on the corner of 14th Street and 6th Avenue in 1858 by Rowland Hussey Macy. By 1877, R.H. Macy & Co. had become a full-fledged department store occupying the ground space of 11 adjacent buildings. By November 1902, the store had outgrown its modest storefront and moved uptown to its present Herald Square location.

The original building has a Palladian facade, with the newer annex more Art-Deco in style. The east facade on Broadway is eight bays wide (an additional east-facing bay is located at the south end, behind the shorter building at the corner of Broadway and 34th). The 2-story base is faced in brown granite, with a dentiled cornice at the top. The 5th bay from the north is projected forward creating a 2-story entrance portico with polished granite columns. A large, cube-shaped gold clock is mounted on top of the portico, and a suspended metal canopy cover the doors. The bays on either side have large show-windows at street-level, topped by short, angled awnings, with multi-paned windows bands above. Projecting light fixtures with globe bulbs adorn each pier. There is another entrance at the northern bay; the main entrance and both end bays have bronze placards on top reading "R.H. MACY & CO." The 3rd & 4th floors are white-painted, rusticated limestone. Each main bay has tripartite windows, with the side windows divided from the center window by white cast-iron pilasters. The windows are multi-paned, with thin green metal sash that includes a round-arch at the top of each center window. The 4th-floor windows have green wrought-iron railings at the bases, and the five middle bays each have a gold letter spelling out "MACYS". The end-bays have single-windows; at the 4th floor they have wider wrought-iron railings that project slightly onto stone balconettes supported by a single scrolled bracket. A dentiled band course caps the 4th floor. The 5th-8th floors have coursed dark-red brick at the outer bays, and fluted Corinthian piers separating the inner bays. The end bays have a white stone-framed window at the 5th floor, topped by a triangular pediment and cartouche; with shorter windows at the 7th & 8th floors, separated by a white stone spandrel with carved swags and a red Macy's star. On either side of the 8th-floor window is a stone pendant with a red Macy's star at the top. Each of the middle bays on the 5th-7th floors has projecting green cast-iron bay windows, with flagpoles projecting from a small brick section at the base of each bay at the 4th floor. At the 8th floor are flat windows divided by green cast-iron pilasters, fronted by ornate green wrought-iron railings, which are also present at the floors below. A white stone cornice caps the midsection of the facade. The 9th & 10th floors are faced in white stone, with double-height round-arched openings with keystones. At the end bays they are framed by alternating bands of dark-red brick, with a carved stone spandrel between the two floors. The 9th-floor windows at the center bays are flanked by columns supporting short cornice sections between the two floors. A green metal dentiled roof cornice caps the 10th floor, with a short, slightly-recessed attic floor above with small windows. This top floor was originally surrounded by a stone balustrade. The southernmost, recessed east-facing bay has a matching top to the other end bays. The two south-facing bays above the shorter corner building have similar round-arches at the top to the middle bays of the east facade, but with molded surrounds, and no flanking columns.

The south facade on 34th Street spans 19 bays west to the annex, which runs an additional 12 bays to Seventh Avenue. At the original building, the lower two floors are mostly cast-iron, with large display windows at the ground floor and bands of windows with X-braced transoms at the 2nd floor. The exceptions are the three entrances. The main entrance, in the 9th bay from the east, is by far the grandest, standing three stories tall and framed in brown stone. It consists of a 2-story round-arch with wide piers, and a revolving door recessed beneath the arch. On the piers are Macy's name plates, 5-globed light fixtures, and ornate cast-iron wreaths and pendants at the top. The entablature above the arch reads "R.H. Macy & Co.", and has a dentiled cornice, which is continued along the rest of the 2nd floor, but painted white. Above the arch, at the 3rd floor, is a balustrade with a large clock face in the middle, with windows behind it. Flanking it are pairs of statues of female figures that serves as columns to support the projecting sections of a short brown stone cornice above, decorated with metopes. The eastern entrance spans two bays, with two floors of brown stone, and a large suspended metal canopy over the ground floor. The third entrance is in the 5th bay from the annex, framed in white-painted stone, with only a pair of simpler light fixtures on the piers for ornamentation. The 3rd & 4th floors are faced in white-painted coursed stone. The narrower end bays have single-windows; the other bays have tripartite windows divided by white iron pilasters. The bases of the 4th-floor windows have ornate green wrought-iron railings, and the 4th floor is topped by a dentiled band course. The 5th-8th floors have coursed dark-red brick piers, with green cast-iron infill organizing each bay of the 5th-7th floors into tripartite windows by way of slender columns and center spandrel panels ornamented with wreaths and ribbons. Intricate railings line the base of each window. The end bays match those on the east facade. The middle bays of the 8th floor have white iron pilasters between the three windows, and there are carved white spandrels below. A broad brick band sets off the 9th & 10th floors, which have stone piers, each with a vertical line of small brick squares. The end bays match those on the east facade, but the middle bays have tripartite windows subdivided into many panes, with narrow green iron mullions and spandrels ornamented with cartouches and swags. The exception is the 4th bay from the annex, which has a round-arch at the 10th floor. The green metal dentiled roof cornice continues along this facade, with the short attic level mostly hidden above it, except for some taller mechanical equipment housings.

On the north facade along 35th Street, the eastern end bay is set back and angled to follow Broadway, while the rest of the facade aligns with 35th Street. The brown stone corner entrance also continues onto this end bay. The rest of the base is painted white, with triple-windows at the 2nd floor of most of the bays. Being the rear of the building, many of the ground-floor bays have service door or freight entrances. A dentiled cornice caps the base. The 3rd & 4th floors have banded limestone piers and tripartite windows separated by stone pilasters; the windows are divided into many panes, with the sash forming round-arches at the tops of the center windows. A dentiled band course sets off the 5th-8th floors, which have coursed dark-red brick piers. They are basically the same as on the south facade, but with stone spandrels instead of green cast-iron. The upper floors also match those on the south facade, but with round-arches in the four eastern bays (next to the end bay), and the 10th-14th bays from the east. The western end bay has paired single-windows at each floor. A rather large black metal pipe extends up the side of the building about halfway across.

The 19-story Art-Deco Annex Building from 1924 complements the original structure in colors and materials, but has a different design. The 4-story base is white-painted limestone, and the facade is asymmetrical. From east to west, it has a narrow single-window bay, three bays of three windows, two more single-window bays framing a triple-window bay, four triple-windows bays, and a narrow single-window bay at the west end. The three widest bays are the group near the east end that have flat stone pilasters separating the windows at the 2nd-3rd floors. Most of the 2nd-floor openings are filled with metal louvers, and there are green metal spandrels between the two floors. Decorative green wrought-iron tops the many-paned 3rd-floor windows, and there are stone spandrels between the 3rd & 4th floors, with rosettes above the pilasters. The 4th-floor windows are also multi-paned, with slender paired iron columns separating the three windows in each bay. All the single-window bays (except the westernmost one) have narrow windows with cross-hatched metal grilles. The center wide bay (framed by narrow bays on either side) has triple-windows on the 2nd & 3rd floors, divided by green metal pilasters and spandrels. Like the windows to the east, they are many-paned, and have wrought-iron decoration at the top. The 4th-floor windows are also the same, only slightly narrower. All the windows in the western bays are similar, but half of the openings on the 2nd floor have metal louvers. The ground floor at this section has display windows, and an entrance at the west end. Each of the eastern wide bays and the center wide bay have large, suspended iron canopies with rounded edges. At the western wide bays, the base is capped by a shallow modillioned cornice, while at the eastern bays it has a broader stone cornice with larger modillions, an iron railing at the top, and carved forms at the piers. Above the base, each of the narrow bays (except at the west end) is clad in dark-red brick with single-windows. At the 5th floor the western wide bays have three windows each, with a wider center window framed by a green iron surround topped by a shield with a star. The 6th-10 floors have four windows per bay, with green iron mullions and spandrels. The other wide bays are similar, but with only three windows per bay. At the east end the 11th-13th floors have brick edges to the stone main piers, and brick intermediate piers between the three windows in each bay. Those on the 11th floor have stone surrounds, and there are shallow segmental-arches at the 13th floor, above which the facade sets back to the upper floors. The far east end is less recessed, and to a peaked gable, clad in brown and red brick. The center section of the building matches the design the east end at the 11th-13th floors, with the upper floors clad in brown brick. One of the narrow bays is also topped by a peaked gable; the other one projects forward with angled corners. At the western end, the 11th-13th floors match those below. The upper floors are clad in brown brick, with setbacks every two floors and paired windows. The southwest corner is chamfered above the base, with vertically-oriented metal letters spelling MACY'S.

The 7th Avenue facade is nine bays wide with narrower end bays. It is faced all in white-painted stone. The original entrance is in the 3rd bay from the north, framed in black marble and a black wrought-iron grille at the top, but has been filled in, with the new entrance one bay to the south. The original entrance bay has a large, rounded black metal canopy, while the newer entrance has a shorter, flat black metal canopy. The other bays have large display windows, except the southern bay, which has a corner entrance framed in brown marble. The upper floors match the west end of the south facade; a video board is installed on the south bay at the 2nd floor. The top floors above the 13th-floor setback are faced in brown stone, with paired windows. There are additional setbacks at the ends above the 15th & 16th floors, closer to the middle above the 17th floor, and a full setback above the 18th floor. At the middle four bays there are green copper spandrels between the 17th & 18th floors.

The north facade of the annex is lined with freight entrances and loading docks at the ground floor. The rest of the 4-story base has dark stone piers and grey-brown brick infill and a variety of industrial windows and metal louvers. On the upper floors, the seven eastern bays have grey-brown brick piers with red brick at each bay. The easternmost and 6th from the east have smaller windows, which alternate between paired and single-windows at each floor. These bays extend to gables at the roof line. The four bays in between have larger paired windows and set back above the 10th floor. The 7th bay from the east, the last one with red brick, also has large paired windows, but extends up to the 13th floor before setting back to the stone top levels. The next two bays are grey brick, both divided by sub-piers into three windows. There is an additional narrow single-window bay at the east, before the facade recesses behind the 2-story adjoining corner building. The north-facing elevation above this low building is clad in brown brick, with one bay of windows at the left edge, and three more windows to the right. Beginning at the 11th floor there are additional openings between the two sets of windows, but they have been bricked in. At the eastern edge, the elevation follows the setbacks from the east facade at the 13th, 15th, 17th & 18th floors.

A renovation by Highland Associates began early 2012, finishing in 2014. It restored almost all of the original Otis elevators, but altered the first floor extensively.

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