Wednesday, November 23, 2011
Brooks Brothers, Beecher on Broadway
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
In these days of downsizing, offshoring and restructuring it is a great pleasure to find that two major retailers have come to settle in our old treasured buildings in the Union Square area. They are Brooks Brothers, opening at 901 Broadway, on the SW corner of 20th Street, and Beecher’s Handmade Cheese, across the avenue at 896-900 Broadway.
Both stores occupy memorable spaces in landmarked buildings, in the Ladies’ Mile District, designated in 1989. Brooks Brothers, founded 1818 in downtown New York, at the crossing of Catherine and Cherry Streets, has returned to the area of its second home (in the 1880s it had moved to Broadway and 22nd Street). The new Flatiron branch is ensconced in the famous Lord & Taylor building, designed 1869 in the Second Empire style by James H. Giles, with a long mansard roof and dormers. Large main windows are bordered by narrow ones and low railing balconies, interesting mullions and lintels abound, all miracles made possible by cast iron features from Daniel Badger’s Architectural Iron Works. As L&T expanded, identical additional buildings were built westward, toward 5th Avenue. Peter Goelet, owner of several Broadway properties in the area, demanded that his buildings’ styles and heights be matched, and L&T had 16-foot tall store front windows, magnificently decorated, which attracted visitors from all over the world. It is the oldest cast iron commercial building in the city, per critic Montgomery Schuyler, and subsequent renovators have retained its original structure. The BB people have honored the historic location, with most interior walls dedicated to city maps, lithographs and photos of old time staff, ballplayers on the store teams and meaningful etchings of old symbols. An open red fire brick wall of book shelves holding mostly xix Century volumes and sets adorns a major open area, and souvenirs abound. Deeper in the room is a wooden bar left by a former restaurant tenant, now equipped as a teller’s desk.
This may be a good time to review the history of our big department and specialty chains affecting our areas of NYC. The original downtown BB at Catherine and Cherry Streets founded by the family’s ancestor as Brooks in 1818 and renamed BB by his heirs, moved to Broadway’s very busy Ladies’ Mile area late in the XIX Century, eventually winding up at the present flagship midtown 346 Madison Avenue site. BB, by now a chain operation countrywide, was sold to Garfinckel’s, the Washington DC department store’s conglomerate in 1946, joined by De Pinna’s, then Ann Taylor’s, then merged into Allied Stores in 1981, then, in 1986, with Federated Stores, into Robert Campeau’s empire. He promptly sold BB to Marks & Spencer’s, and the stores were run from London for a decade plus, until the British owners passed the firm in 2001 to the Claudio dell Vecchio’s Retail Brand Alliance (RBA also owns Carolee jewelry and Adrienne Vittadini fashions chains).Now there are 210 BB stores worldwide, China to Dubai to Paris and everywhere else. The new Flatiron branch can call on several NYC branches for supplies within hours, should a size be missing, and they do, successfully. This is a far cry from my first BB foray in 1949, in the Grand Concourse and Fordham Road area, in my old sweet Bronx, to buy a grey flannel three-button business suit (the model converted to two buttons years ago).. The suit jackets were then stacked on tables turned out with the linings showing, and cash traveled in pneumatic tubes to the teller’s cage.
The 900 Broadway building on the NE corner of 20th Street , across from BB, is the East Coast home of Seattle’s Beecher’s Homemade Cheese – a factory, retail store , café and a downstairs bistro called The Cellar – all in one huge elegant space. The factory is a huge glass cage inside the main floor, looking like a neat swimming pool, and currently operating three days a week. Weekday cheese tastings introduce the chase flavors. It is a fascinating and interesting enterprise that has attracted a fair following since its June opening.
The building is equally fascinating, an 1886 McKim, Mead and White fantasy confected for Peter and Ogden Goelet of the patrician hardware baron family. It was built as a five story structure with double height ground floor and tall, arched Romanesque windows curved over by reddish brick and terracotta masonry Beaux-Arts domed lintels. The masonry is in several tones, from orange to dark, and patterns abound. The two walls (four giant windows on 20th, three on Broadway) join in a round entrance, which was originally topped by a turret. The fifth floor was torn down, eliminating the corner tower, when in 1905 the building was extended to ten stories, designed by Maynicke and Franke, carefully following the McKim firm’s original form. The building held, over the years, a gas fixture manufacturing firm, a carpet house, real estate operator offices, and, to my memory, a Bombay furniture dealership.
These are two flagship structures of the Ladies’ Mile Historic District. A trip up Broadway, 14th to 23rd Streets, then back on Sixth Avenue, keeping your eyes upwards, will show you building beauties that are hard to match anywhere.
Wally Dobelis thanks Jack Taylor of Ladies’ Mile, Christopher Gray of NYTimes and internet sources. He and the staff of T&V wish our readers a Happy Thanksgiving.
In these days of downsizing, offshoring and restructuring it is a great pleasure to find that two major retailers have come to settle in our old treasured buildings in the Union Square area. They are Brooks Brothers, opening at 901 Broadway, on the SW corner of 20th Street, and Beecher’s Handmade Cheese, across the avenue at 896-900 Broadway.
Both stores occupy memorable spaces in landmarked buildings, in the Ladies’ Mile District, designated in 1989. Brooks Brothers, founded 1818 in downtown New York, at the crossing of Catherine and Cherry Streets, has returned to the area of its second home (in the 1880s it had moved to Broadway and 22nd Street). The new Flatiron branch is ensconced in the famous Lord & Taylor building, designed 1869 in the Second Empire style by James H. Giles, with a long mansard roof and dormers. Large main windows are bordered by narrow ones and low railing balconies, interesting mullions and lintels abound, all miracles made possible by cast iron features from Daniel Badger’s Architectural Iron Works. As L&T expanded, identical additional buildings were built westward, toward 5th Avenue. Peter Goelet, owner of several Broadway properties in the area, demanded that his buildings’ styles and heights be matched, and L&T had 16-foot tall store front windows, magnificently decorated, which attracted visitors from all over the world. It is the oldest cast iron commercial building in the city, per critic Montgomery Schuyler, and subsequent renovators have retained its original structure. The BB people have honored the historic location, with most interior walls dedicated to city maps, lithographs and photos of old time staff, ballplayers on the store teams and meaningful etchings of old symbols. An open red fire brick wall of book shelves holding mostly xix Century volumes and sets adorns a major open area, and souvenirs abound. Deeper in the room is a wooden bar left by a former restaurant tenant, now equipped as a teller’s desk.
This may be a good time to review the history of our big department and specialty chains affecting our areas of NYC. The original downtown BB at Catherine and Cherry Streets founded by the family’s ancestor as Brooks in 1818 and renamed BB by his heirs, moved to Broadway’s very busy Ladies’ Mile area late in the XIX Century, eventually winding up at the present flagship midtown 346 Madison Avenue site. BB, by now a chain operation countrywide, was sold to Garfinckel’s, the Washington DC department store’s conglomerate in 1946, joined by De Pinna’s, then Ann Taylor’s, then merged into Allied Stores in 1981, then, in 1986, with Federated Stores, into Robert Campeau’s empire. He promptly sold BB to Marks & Spencer’s, and the stores were run from London for a decade plus, until the British owners passed the firm in 2001 to the Claudio dell Vecchio’s Retail Brand Alliance (RBA also owns Carolee jewelry and Adrienne Vittadini fashions chains).Now there are 210 BB stores worldwide, China to Dubai to Paris and everywhere else. The new Flatiron branch can call on several NYC branches for supplies within hours, should a size be missing, and they do, successfully. This is a far cry from my first BB foray in 1949, in the Grand Concourse and Fordham Road area, in my old sweet Bronx, to buy a grey flannel three-button business suit (the model converted to two buttons years ago).. The suit jackets were then stacked on tables turned out with the linings showing, and cash traveled in pneumatic tubes to the teller’s cage.
The 900 Broadway building on the NE corner of 20th Street , across from BB, is the East Coast home of Seattle’s Beecher’s Homemade Cheese – a factory, retail store , café and a downstairs bistro called The Cellar – all in one huge elegant space. The factory is a huge glass cage inside the main floor, looking like a neat swimming pool, and currently operating three days a week. Weekday cheese tastings introduce the chase flavors. It is a fascinating and interesting enterprise that has attracted a fair following since its June opening.
The building is equally fascinating, an 1886 McKim, Mead and White fantasy confected for Peter and Ogden Goelet of the patrician hardware baron family. It was built as a five story structure with double height ground floor and tall, arched Romanesque windows curved over by reddish brick and terracotta masonry Beaux-Arts domed lintels. The masonry is in several tones, from orange to dark, and patterns abound. The two walls (four giant windows on 20th, three on Broadway) join in a round entrance, which was originally topped by a turret. The fifth floor was torn down, eliminating the corner tower, when in 1905 the building was extended to ten stories, designed by Maynicke and Franke, carefully following the McKim firm’s original form. The building held, over the years, a gas fixture manufacturing firm, a carpet house, real estate operator offices, and, to my memory, a Bombay furniture dealership.
These are two flagship structures of the Ladies’ Mile Historic District. A trip up Broadway, 14th to 23rd Streets, then back on Sixth Avenue, keeping your eyes upwards, will show you building beauties that are hard to match anywhere.
Wally Dobelis thanks Jack Taylor of Ladies’ Mile, Christopher Gray of NYTimes and internet sources. He and the staff of T&V wish our readers a Happy Thanksgiving.
# posted by Wally Dobelis @ 7:53 AM 
