There are currently 510 Apple retail stores located across the globe.
Some are big, and some are small. But only a handful are iconic. And from that small handful,
Apple's flagship 5th Avenue store in New York City stands out above the rest.
Only a stone’s throw away from Central Park, the Apple Store on Fifth Avenue
is set against the backdrop of the famous General Motors Building by
Edward Durell Stone and is now one of the most successful retail sites in the world.
But few people realize that it exists because of an aspiring property mogul
who had just taken the biggest gamble of his life and needed to
solve a problem — and because he knew exactly who would be able to solve it.
In 2003, still-aspiring property mogul Harry Macklowe had finally
hit the jackpot with his purchase of the iconic General Motors Building for
1.4 billion dollars in borrowed money from none other than Donald Trump. At the time,
this was the highest price paid for a North American office building.
One of Macklowe’s first concerns was how to fix the large and rather useless
open plaza that extended from the front entrance of the building to Fifth Avenue.
Originally, the central area was sunken 12 feet below the sidewalk in homage to
the Rockefeller Plaza and was home to the Auto Pub restaurant until the late 1970s.
By the turn of the millennium, the plaza, now clad in artificial turf,
had become fairly desolate and was failing to attract any visitors, so it was raised
to grade with the hope of attracting a retail tenant to the newly created space.
Macklowe had a feeling that his best bet to really transform the space into a vibrant commercial
property lay with Apple, which, at the time, was just on the verge of blowing up into a retail
giant several years into Steve Jobs’ second stint as the company’s CEO.
Macklowe pestered Apple’s then vice-president of real estate,
George Blankenship until he was invited to a meeting with Jobs in November of 2003.
It was in this meeting that Jobs and his team would share their idea for
the store with a wooden model of the GM Building and plaza complete with a
40-foot glass cube in the middle that would descend visitors into a retail space below.
Macklowe had originally envisaged a glass pavilion close to the street,
but Jobs chose to put it right in the middle, just like the Louvre in Paris.
Macklowe thought it was brilliant, particularly because it made perfect use of the disused
basement that had previously caused headaches for its owners for more than 40 years.
But there was one major flaw in Job’s concept, the glass cube was just too big.
Not only would it violate city zoning laws but it would have also obscured the GM Building itself.
But notorious for his angry outbursts, Macklowe knew he couldn’t break this news to Jobs himself.
He’d have to show Apple what he meant instead.
He invited Apple retail development executives to come and see a scaffold mockup of the cube
built on the plaza in the middle of the night. The executives met with Macklowe and his team
at around 2 AM and immediately realized that the 40-foot cube was too large. Macklowe then pulled
what has been described as a "magic trick", by having the model dismantled to reveal a smaller
30-foot cube underneath – His magic trick worked. Apple was sold on the smaller cube.
Over the next three years, Steve Jobs would call Macklowe on a prolific basis demanding continual
updates and to ask how he could get involved with the project in any way. Jobs was so excited about
the store that he even built a mock-up of the cube in the parking lot of Apple’s Headquarters.
During this time, Macklowe became great friends with Jobs and at one point he even offered him an
office space within the General Motors Building, but Jobs declined, citing that when we was in
New York, he wanted to be in SoHo so that he could be around young people to get new ideas.
On May 19, 2006, the new store was officially unveiled to the
public and immediately drew long lines of customers and tourists.
Macklowe’s real estate attorney later stated that he regretted negotiating what he described as a
“horrendously low” percentage with Apple; never realizing that the store would take off in the
way it did, pulling in over a million dollars per day within its first year of operation. But with
Apple only being in retail for a short five years by the time the store opened, it’s no surprise
that no one could accurately predict exactly how the store would perform. Since then, the cube has
had over 60 million visitors, more annually than the Statue of Liberty or Empire State Building.
Apple would renovate its Fifth Avenue store twice more in the following years. The first minor
update came in 2011 when the company spent just under 7 million dollars to carefully disassemble
the five-year-old cube and replace it with a new structure that utilized only 15 panes of
glass rather than the 90 previously used in the original cube. The new cube was also "seamless",
doing away with nearly all of the hardware that had previously held the panes of glass together.
In addition to the new cube, Apple also made minor upgrades to the
plaza by installing new water drains and pavers whilst also
removing the small bollards that had previously surrounded the structure.
This was only the beginning of the extensive modernization that would occur only 6 years later.
In Early 2017, Apple officially closed their Fifth Avenue Store and moved into the former FAO Schwarz
retail space directly behind the glass cube. This was incredibly good timing for Apple as the
toy-retailer had only just vacated the property a few months earlier after being the latest victim
of rising rents and ultraluxury retailing in New York City’s hottest shopping district.
At the time the store closed, no one knew exactly what Apple had planned for the location
or how long construction would take, but two years later on September 19,
2019, the store was finally re-opened and it turned out to be well worth the wait.
It takes great restraint and judgment to tastefully update a store as iconic
as the cube. Though dwarfed by the skyscrapers surrounding it,
the store has been a modern monument in New York City for the past 14 years,
and altering its appearance significantly would be almost akin to rewriting history.
So when Apple peeled away the temporary iridescent wrappings that announced the store’s return,
it revealed a cube that looked remarkably familiar. The entrance still features the same 15
individual glass panels and illuminated Apple logo as before. But that’s where the similarities end.
Now nearly double the size of its predecessor with higher ceilings and more natural light,
Apple’s Fifth Avenue store is a brighter, more expansive space,
and the perfect stage for customers to discover and the company’s newest products.
The area dedicated to Geniuses has also doubled, allowing the team to dramatically increase their
service capacity, a problem that had plagued the store since its opening. At its grand
opening in May 2006, just under 300 employees staffed the original store but today, the space
hosts a team of 900 speaking 36 different languages 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
The completely reimagined plaza is lined by 28 honey locust trees that border linear fountains,
providing a more welcoming and quiet setting for people to gather and sit. At the center
of the plaza, the iconic glass cube is flanked by 18 mirror-glass Sky lenses and 62 skylights.
During the day, the skylights add texture to what would otherwise be empty paving and allow light
to flood into the retail space below. At night, they illuminate the plaza with an ambient glow.
The so-called sky lenses rise out of the ground and have mirrored stainless steel
shells with reflective glass tops that reflect the surrounding New
York skyline and allow light to pour down into the store.
Visitors now enter the store by descending a new stainless steel staircase,
which replaces the all-glass staircase that came before it,
or by riding a dynamic circular elevator. The staircase is a remarkable design achievement
in itself with 43 cantilevered stair treads that support a floating cylinder of glass.
Two new side entrances have also been added to the store and while locals
may use these for quicker access, visitors and tourists making a trip to see the store
will no doubt still want to enter through the iconic cube for the full experience.
Inside the store, walls are clad in a pale grey Italian Castagna stone with varying stripes and
rounded corners. The same stone is used at Apple Park, which was also designed by Foster
+ Partners. Above is a back-lit, cloud-like ceiling made from curved fabric that combines
artificial and natural light to match the real-time tones of sunlight throughout the day.
Trees are also planted inside to make the store feel more in tune with nature.
Upholstered benches in a caramel fabric atop a white base surround each tree where visitors can
sit and charge their devices. There is also a dedicated room for testing out the HomePod. And
as an ode to the old days, Apple added an AirPods display that depicts the earbuds as
music notes matching those from the classic Think Different television commercials.”
Since the iPod era, the store has been a staple of every new
Apple product launch and the face of launch day excitement in New York City.
An iconic location deserves a store built to stand the test of time,
and Apple’s latest take on the cube certainly has them putting their best foot forward.