has a free hand in effecting the best compromise his skill can devise between the merchant’s insistence that the windows must sell the merchandise and the decorator s aspiration, backed by now countless resources for arresting displays, to present windows of impressive charm and ceaseless novelty.
It would seem — indeed, it cannot fail to be — presumptuous for any one architect, however widely experienced in the field, to lay down any rules whatever for the guidance of his colleagues. But, in view of the vastness of the field that is opening and of the perplexities involved in the problems arising throughout that field, it is time for someone to say something — something that shall be really informative and directly practical.
The window of today presents itself for analysis under three heads, with every one of which the architect is vitally concerned. They are: First, the conception of the store front, where the exterior is now called upon, in its general design and in its details, to body forth the individual character of the store and to serve as a very valuable and permanent advertising feature. Second, the interior frame of the window, providing for the widest imaginable range of display and decoration. Third, technical equipment, including, especially, lighting facilities and mechanisms facilitating display changes.
To the man newly specializing in store window architecture, these window details can be as difficult of solution as was the plumbing of the earlier skyscraping office buildings, when one brilliant architect observed: “The toughest part of the job is in what nobody sees and everybody uses — the plumbing. ”
Leaving aside, for the moment those two unseen but difficult aspects, the lighting and the mechanism, we can clear the air to a large extent by considering the window front and interior. We find that these problems promptly divide into two broad groups. One embraces those applying to the department store, with its long expanse of window frontage and its necessity for displays on the grand scale. The other includes the specialty and other shops which may have no more than one or two windows and must depend for their effectiveness on distinctive artistry of design and execution as to the front and a variety of treatments
for the interior. While place is to be given to the department store because of its present domination of the scene, no one can afford to disdain the shop of narrower frontage and often of a single sales floor. Not only is the small shop gaining in favor with the public, because of its specialization, but its numbers are being increased yearly by the thousands of chain stores that are springing up in every center of population — a new, limitless market for the talents of the architect qualified to confer on each chain a front which shall be as individual and identifiable by its beauty as is the crass carmine frontage that distinguishes the Woolworth stores.
In New York there prevails still a wide diversity of practice in adapting the windows of department stores and very large specialty shops to the exigencies of modern display. Along Fifth Avenue one can see many examples of the large store’s endeavor to convince the passerby that it is a specialist in every branch of its merchandising by the use of windows relatively small in all dimensions, just as one can see also examples of unusual height and breadth and depth in windows which emphasize the aggregate, combined power of the store as a unified whole.
AMFORM SHOP, NEW YORK — WILLIAM VAN ALEN, ARCHITECT
EXTENSIVE USE OF GLASS CORNERS TO INCREASE WINDOW DISPLAY SPACE
Photo by Van Anda
It would seem — indeed, it cannot fail to be — presumptuous for any one architect, however widely experienced in the field, to lay down any rules whatever for the guidance of his colleagues. But, in view of the vastness of the field that is opening and of the perplexities involved in the problems arising throughout that field, it is time for someone to say something — something that shall be really informative and directly practical.
The window of today presents itself for analysis under three heads, with every one of which the architect is vitally concerned. They are: First, the conception of the store front, where the exterior is now called upon, in its general design and in its details, to body forth the individual character of the store and to serve as a very valuable and permanent advertising feature. Second, the interior frame of the window, providing for the widest imaginable range of display and decoration. Third, technical equipment, including, especially, lighting facilities and mechanisms facilitating display changes.
To the man newly specializing in store window architecture, these window details can be as difficult of solution as was the plumbing of the earlier skyscraping office buildings, when one brilliant architect observed: “The toughest part of the job is in what nobody sees and everybody uses — the plumbing. ”
Leaving aside, for the moment those two unseen but difficult aspects, the lighting and the mechanism, we can clear the air to a large extent by considering the window front and interior. We find that these problems promptly divide into two broad groups. One embraces those applying to the department store, with its long expanse of window frontage and its necessity for displays on the grand scale. The other includes the specialty and other shops which may have no more than one or two windows and must depend for their effectiveness on distinctive artistry of design and execution as to the front and a variety of treatments
for the interior. While place is to be given to the department store because of its present domination of the scene, no one can afford to disdain the shop of narrower frontage and often of a single sales floor. Not only is the small shop gaining in favor with the public, because of its specialization, but its numbers are being increased yearly by the thousands of chain stores that are springing up in every center of population — a new, limitless market for the talents of the architect qualified to confer on each chain a front which shall be as individual and identifiable by its beauty as is the crass carmine frontage that distinguishes the Woolworth stores.
In New York there prevails still a wide diversity of practice in adapting the windows of department stores and very large specialty shops to the exigencies of modern display. Along Fifth Avenue one can see many examples of the large store’s endeavor to convince the passerby that it is a specialist in every branch of its merchandising by the use of windows relatively small in all dimensions, just as one can see also examples of unusual height and breadth and depth in windows which emphasize the aggregate, combined power of the store as a unified whole.
AMFORM SHOP, NEW YORK — WILLIAM VAN ALEN, ARCHITECT
EXTENSIVE USE OF GLASS CORNERS TO INCREASE WINDOW DISPLAY SPACE
Photo by Van Anda