Like the Rockefeller Christmas tree lighting or Radio City Rockettes, New York City’s impressive window displays are a vital part of the holiday experience. Here in the city, the holiday season doesn’t officially begin until the city’s biggest retailers unveil their annual displays. Since Macy’s debuted the tradition in 1883, the department store window setups have become more intricate and spectacular in their technical design.
In recent years, more retailers have taken advantage of innovative technologies to power their window displays. In 2015, for instance, Barneys New York featured live ice-carving inside their windows, and other high-end retailers have upped their game, too, like when Swarovski used LED technology to mimic diamond jewelry adorning storefront mannequins in 2015.
Considering how these displays have evolved into elaborately-planned technological feats, it is especially fitting that the history of department store holiday windows stretches back to the days of the Industrial Revolution. It was then, during the late-1800s, when plate glass became widely available, that store owners were motivated to build large floor-to-ceiling style windows spanning the lengths of their shops.
As a tribute to this New York City tradition and in anticipation of the most wonderful time of the year, let’s take a closer look at famous window displays from New York’s past.
By 1914, Saks Fifth Avenue stirs public intrigue at their flagship location by staging ‘unveiling events’ for their holiday display window. Displays at this time incorporated hydraulic lifts beneath the windows, which allowed teams of artisans to work on new designs out of public view.
In 1933, Macy’s window display was entitled “Around the World at Christmas Time.” All its shop windows embodied a train-travel theme [pictured above].
In 1938, Lord & Taylor eschewed the traditional method of presenting store merchandise in favor of a purely decorative display. The department store hangs gilded bells that swing in sync with recorded sounds of sleigh bells.
Bergdorf Goodman’s window display followed an Art Deco “Ziegfield’s Follies” theme and featured several miniature mannequins from earlier eras, 2012 [pictured above].
In 2015, researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology debut a new kind of transparent display technology, which they developed by embedding nanoparticles in glass screens. If the product is marketed to retailers, New Yorkers can expect to see a new class of spectacular display windows in the years to come.
This article was originally posted on NovelPropertyVentures.com
