Macy\'s Is Losing Its Marble, Annoying a Preservationist

By JAMES BARRON

Macy's is giving itself a $400 million makeover that it says will maintain the store's “architectural integrity,” but one preservationist, Theodore Grunewald, is not happy.

The face-lift began in the spring at Macy's flagship store, on West 34th Street between Broadway and Seventh Avenue, the almost-square-block backdrop for the annual Thanksgiving Day parade and the 1947 film “Miracle on 34th Street.” Much of the first floor on the Broadway side is under wraps. Floor-to-ceiling partitions cover boutiques that are under construction.

A few steps away, in what Macy's calls the “great hall” leading from Broadway toward Seventh Avenue, not-yet-finished display areas are blocked by curtains that go only so high.

It was what Mr. Grunewald, who was trained as an architect, saw above the curtains that upset him. The structural columns rising to the ceiling had been simplified. No longer did they have the Art Deco look that was so familiar in that part of the store. The marble cladding that he said had given them elegance and color was gone.

So were pendant chandeliers as dramatic as anything in a movie palace worthy of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.

“It's a tragedy to lose something that's authentic,” said Mr. Grunewald, who walked through the store on Wednesday for the first time in several months. “All the king's horses and all the king's men will never make Art Deco again. Imagine trying to build the Chrysler Building now if you had to.”

Macy's, which describes the project as the most extensive one-time renovation in the store's history, was conscious of “maintaining the uniqueness of an iconic New York City destination,” Elina Kazan, a spokeswoman, said.

“We have painstakingly worked with our architects to keep the architectural integrity of the flagship but also take it into 21st-century modern retailing,” she said.

She said th e look Mr. Grunewald prized had arrived with the last renovation of the main floor a few decades ago. “It's not the original, that's for sure,” she said. “It's the 1970s.”

Macy's says that when that part of the store opened in 1902, the columns were round and were “smooth painted plaster.” The newly renovated columns will retain the octagonal shape they subsequently acquired, though not the marble cladding.

The plans call for restoring an ornate “memorial entrance” on 34th Street and for preserving 42 of the store's 43 wooden escalators. (The 43rd is being dismantled and cannibalized for parts to keep the others going.)

“When people think of Macy's Herald Square,” she said, “people think of the wooden escalators, and they're going to be there.” She added the renovation, expected to be complete in 2015, had opened up painted-over windows on the second floor, where Macy's says it has created the largest women's shoe department in the w orld.

That is fine with Mr. Grunewald, who formed an organization that won a 2012 Grassroots Preservation Award from the Historic Districts Council for pushing to have the interior of a Midtown bank designated a landmark. (The bank's exterior had been designated in 1997.) But he said the new look of the first floor at Macy's was “jarring.”

“I hate to say it, but what they've got is Apple store fever. It seems to me that every retail designer now thinks that copying the Apple store will land them the same success that Apple has had with the millennials,” Mr. Grunewald said. “But right now, I've got Apple fatigue, because everywhere you go, you see the same idiom of clear glass cases, glass banisters on staircases, minimal ceiling and floor detailing.”

He added: “Macy's has something unique. Why do they want to be like everyone else?”

Mr. Grunewald said Macy's, which has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1978 , should be approved as a landmark by the city's Landmarks Preservation Commission. But in 2007, when the commission received a request to designate the store's exterior for landmark eligibility, the commission's staff decided that the additional research that would have been necessary was not a priority.

“If Lord & Taylor and Saks Fifth Avenue are landmark-worthy,” Mr. Grunewald said, “surely Macy's is. It's like ignoring the Statue of Liberty. It's the soul of New York.”

On Thursday, some Macy's shoppers, like Susanna Satten, who was on her way to pick up the dress she will wear as the maid of honor in a wedding on Saturday, said they had noticed the construction.

“I'd be for preserving the historic stuff if they could,” Ms. Satten said. “I think it's more charming.”