In bestowing some of the 1921 architecture where it hadn’t really existed in this low basement space, BCJ created a coffered ceiling with new chandeliers, shallower and smaller than the ones upstairs. In order to carve out a space from the original storage rooms, the architects removed columns and 18-inch-thick concrete bearing walls, and in turn beefed up overhead beams. On the south end of the lower floor, BCJ inserted a new accessories area for ancillary Apple products, again with oak display tables and walls. The typical Apple-designed stalwart oak display tables and shelving units also needed to be fine-tuned to the scale and proportions of the space.ĭownstairs, the architects refurbished the old bank vault and its original door on the north end and fitted out the interior of the vault with a modern demonstration room. The process, explains Brigham Keehner, BCJ senior associate, required dry laying-mounting the marble on boards-at a fabricator before it was shipped to New York and installed. To restore the stone floor, Apple sent the design team on seven trips to Italy match the Botticino marble. “We had to adapt to the requirements of fire, universal access, and energy codes.” “It wasn’t just a deep clean,” says David Andreini, BCJ project director. Similarly the architects kept the grilles for heating vents and cloned new ones where needed. Although much of the coffered ceiling could be kept, it had to be repaired, and downlights and sprinklers inserted. But the latter two features BCJ and Apple decided to bring back: working with artisans, the design team not only recreated the pilasters and capitals but installed new wheel-shaped chandeliers mimicking the old. So were the pilasters with shallow basrelief Corinthian capitals on the walls, along with the original chandeliers. The tellers’ windows and low marble balustrade dividers on the banking floor were long gone. Throughout the years, the 1921 bank fittings and furnishings had been lost with various tenants that included a Chase branch, an antiques store, an art gallery, and most recently a luxury handbag and jewelry shop. The interior, however, needed to be completely overhauled. BCJ architects say they cannot comment because the case is in litigation. One property owner, Herbert Feinberg, filed a lawsuit that is still pending, arguing that, according to a fire protection consultant he hired, the new place may not be in compliance with fire codes. Residents signed a petition last spring protesting the hot dog carts and crowds that might camp in front of the store. While the Apple emporia have proved to be great boons to their respective New York neighborhoods, this locale did not throw open its Armani-jacketed arms to greet the new arrival. For 940 Madison Avenue, the company again enlisted Bohlin Cywinski Jackson (BCJ)-the San Francisco and Philadelphia offices-as it had with four out of the five previous Manhattan outposts. As is frequently Apple’s policy with new stores, not only in New York but internationally, such as in Paris, Amsterdam, and Berlin, it seeks to retain the aura of an original structure while accommodating its famously future- oriented technological goods. The store is ensconced within a late English Renaissance-style two-story building designed in 1921 by Henry Otis Chapman of Barney & Chapman ( RECORD, February 1923, page 143) as a branch of the United States Mortgage & Trust Company.
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