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SPOTLIGHT ON THE NEW MACY*S
by Robert L. Green

On Wednesday, October 28, 1858, Rowland Hussey Macy, three times unsuccessful as a merchant, opened a small fancy dry goods store at 204-206 Sixth Avenue.  R.H. Macy's was not born stage struck but 121 years later it certainly achieved the conditions.

R.H. Macy's has become part store, part college for continuing education, and part theatre.  Edward S. Finkelstein, the 54-year-old Harvard-educated chairman and executive officer of the store is making his name by filling the store with goods destined to appeal to the widest possible audience.  At Macy's there is a new and perhaps unconscious quality – a retailer's romanticism – which has more to do with a shopper's emotional response to life than with his need to replace something lost or worn out.

A visit to Macy's has become for many people a theatrical event with a dress rehearsal in the morning, a matinee in the afternoon and a gala in the evening.

The department store as an all-purpose center is not new.  Harrad's, London's Grande Dame of retail establishments, has been operating a funeral department, a catering service and a library for about 100 years.  In Japan, department stores

[[image - photography of Macy's department store and street parade]]
As traditional as turkey and cranberry sauce is Macy's fantastic, annual Thanksgiving Day Parade now in its 53rd year.

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The Cellar, Macy's subterranean cavern with food and merchandise shops and a branch of P.J. Clarke's restaurant, has been flourishing since it opened in October, 1976.

[[image - photograph of shop]]
The new Private Lives shop offers the fine sheets, towels and dinner sets of Porthault Linens, the prestigious French firm.

[[image - photograph of women at microphone and audience]]
At Macy's benefit for the Neighborhood Playhouse, Laurie Beechman sings as Andrea ("Annie") McArdle (seated in white) listens.

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compete actively with major museums to sponsor significant art shows.  In Switzerland, Off-Broadway type productions find theatre space by using the department store arcades at night.

The new Macy's gives the impression of a store immensely young and galvanized.  The 20-story store (ten selling floors) is once again becoming a legendary showplace for tourists and a rediscovered treasure for New Yorkers.  For this grand and not-to-be-believed kingdom of Oz-on-the-Hudson, the change from a dark and depressing bargain-tabled cavern to a joyful fashion center is nothing short of a cosmic triumph.

From the outside, Macy's seems the prototype of a 19th century commercial mansion.  Inside, it has visual displays that endow the merchandise with freshness and spontaneity.  On 34th Street there is the shriek of chic.

No store has an exclusive on name designers anymore.  If the current fashion superstars are Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein, Geoffrey Beene, Perry Ellis and Diane Von Furstenberg, you can bet that stores across the country will open with that same splendid cast of characters.  As to which store gets the best audience – that is generally determined by the publicity, production and visual presentation.

These days nobody questions that Macy's has multitudinous merits.  The only argument is which one of its many merits is the most meritorious:

THE CELLAR  A tableau of foods on either side of a travertine-floored promenade 20 feet wide ... a Shangri-la for new brides or honored chefs searing for the perfect coffee pot or omelette pan ... and tucked behind the refurbished and mahogany-sided elevator, a branch of P.J. Clarke's, the Third Avenue saloon-type restaurant.  Here Macy's growing group of affluent and attractive customers (think of people like Liza Minnelli, Joe Namath, Lily Tomlin, Henry Winkler – not exactly beautiful but rough-cut and alive) enjoy a delicious pick-up and an intimate look at fashion heroes Bill Blass, Donald Brooks, Zandra Rhodes – all of whom are regulars.  The service at P.J.'s is professional, pleasant and unpressured.

Serious shopping gives some people an 

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