"The Store Strikes Back"

HEADLINE: The Store Strikes Back

BYLINE: By Paul Goldberger; Paul Goldberger is the chief cultural correspondent for The Times.

The first thing you think when you see Nike's new flagship store on East 57thStreet in New York City is that this is not a store at all. Niketown's facade isa takeoff on an old New York high-school building. You enter through turnstiles,in the manner of a sports arena, to find yourself in a sleek, futuristic, five-story atrium into which, at 30-minute intervals, a three-story-high screen descends and a video softly plugging Nike products is played along with a crescendo of recorded music. There are displays of sports memorabilia and a chance to hit a punching bag. Where are the sneakers?

They are there, and if you want to buy, salespeople will be happy to oblige. But the merchandise is secondary to the experience of being in this store, an experience that bears more than a passing resemblance to a visit to a theme park. Niketown is a fantasy environment, one part nostalgia to two parts high tech, and it exists to bedazzle the consumer, to give its merchandise sex appealand establish Nike as the essence not just of athletic wear but also of our culture and way of life.

What's true of sneakers applies as well to office wear and lampshades and CD's: you can get the merchandise a million different ways, but retailers are working to make stores provide something that catalogues, the Internet and home shopping cannot -- the thrill of an event. Make it spectacular enough and they will come. In a culture that is starved for public experiences and that increasingly consumes entertainment in private, stores are functioning more and more as an escape from the personal space of computers and VCR's. Stores entice us into their versions of a public realm, offering a Faustian bargain: step intoour commercial world and we will give you the kind of communal excitement that it's hard to find this side of Disneyland.

It wasn't supposed to turn out this way. By now, stores were supposed to be as obsolete as black-and-white television. Who needed to go someplace, fight traffic, struggle for parking and cope with crowds when you could look through colorful catalogues, pick up the phone and have Federal Express deliver the goods the very next day? And if that temptation wasn't enough to keep you away from the mall, there was QVC and the Home Shopping Network, where the goods wereparaded before you on the screen. And then came the Internet, which was absolutely, positively going to put the final nail in the retailing coffin. By the millennium, nobody would have to go to the store anymore, not even for a quart of milk.

The first sign to the contrary came around 1980. Even as big department stores were starting to go out of business or file for bankruptcy protection, a few mail-order merchants like the Sharper Image and Franklin Mint began opening stores of their own. Nobody paid much attention, but the trend spread. Sharper Image, for instance, went from one store in the United States in 1983 to 80 thisyear, even in such high-rent neighborhoods as upper Madison Avenue in New York. J. Crew, known to America as the prototypical catalogue company, opened a retail store at the South Street Seaport fairly quietly in 1989 but now has 40 stores nationwide, including a huge store on Prince Street in SoHo that opened last November.

What happened? Put simply, retailers came back by figuring out how to compete with other forms of selling. Instead of convenience, they had to give shoppers the one experience that technology could not replace -- indeed, the experience that technology almost eliminated in our time. That is, to give the pleasure of physically being somewhere, of going to a place that was bigger, grander and in every way more exhilarating and more energizing than anything the customer could experience at home.

Superficially, retailing has taken on a role a lot like the one it played 100 years ago, when the great metropolitan department stores were first established and set themselves up not merely as merchants but also as veritable bazaars, bringing women out of their houses and into the public realm for the first time. "There is a long history of great stores consciously providing entertainment," says Elaine Abelson, a historian who has written on the relationship of women to early stores. Siegel-Cooper, which was the first modern department store, "had an orchestra, art shows, tearooms, everything to get people there and keep them there." When it opened, The New York Times described it as "a shopping resort." Other stores, like Wanamaker's, featured organ music amid graceful, noble physical space.

Frances Trollope, a British writer and social commentator, saw it all coming early in the 19th century. She came to Cincinnati to try to put into practice her dream for a new kind of store. Mrs. Trollope's Bazaar, as she called it, contained a coffeehouse, an art gallery, a ballroom and an orchestral gallery in which musicals would be presented along with the goods to be sold. The Bazaar did not last long -- either it was too far ahead of its time or Trollope was a better writer than merchant -- but its creator was onto something. She knew that retailing could do much more than merely sell goods, that a store could offer a connection to a broader culture, and if it did those things well, it would surround itself with a powerful allure that would sell all the more goods.

And so it is today. What has changed since John Wanamaker's time is not the idea of the store as a forum for public life but the public itself. There is little of the sense of grandeur that once was, no sense of a higher mission. Just as the culture is now driven by entertainment, by technology and by the mystical power of brand names, so stores seek only the quick hit: dazzle them and get them buying fast.

Ours is not an age that puts the highest premium on architectural authenticity; we much prefer to wallow in the warm bath of make-believe than to invent anew, and we seem to like nothing better than to be seduced by places that make us think of other places. They can be like Diesel, which, with its in-store D.J. and retro-chic coffee bar, is designed to make you feel like you're in a hip nightclub. They can be places like the flagship store of Recreational Equipment in Seattle, a nearly 100,000-square-foot, warehouselike structure that contains a 65-foot-high freestanding artificial rock for climbing, a glass-enclosed wet stall for testing rain gear, a vented area for testing camp stoves and an outdoor trail for mountain-biking. Or the new SneakerStadium in Paramus, N.J., a 31,000-square-foot barn with tracks and basketball courts for trying out sports shoes, a rock soundtrack, giant video screens and a waterfall. Does it work? The Wall Street Journal reports that Sneaker Stadium pulls in $700 in sales per square foot, compared with $200 per foot at the average suburban mall.

The new form of retailing has completely changed the mall, once a tired, formula-driven box, now a sprawling agglomeration of entertainment, food and merchandise. The largest mall built in the last five years, Ontario Mills, just east of Los Angeles, is a 1.7-million-square-foot, multicolored bunker that contains 200 stores and a 30-screen cinema. By later this spring, it will also have a high-tech arcade and an entire theme park based on wild animals.

Retailing has transformed Times Square, the greatest public entertainment district in America but for the last 40 years a sad story of deterioration and decay. Now, a Disney Store holds sway over the corner of 42d Street and Seventh Avenue; a vast Virgin Megastore, complete with cafe and cinema tucked underneath, fills what had once been the unrented atrium of a high-rise office tower, and national retail chains are falling all over themselves to rent space that a couple of years ago couldn't be given away. (One company that sells souvenir magnets was quoted a price of $375 per square foot for space on 42d Street, nearly the going rate on Madison Avenue.)

Times Square is a case of the existing urban fabric evolving into a new-style retail and entertainment mix, the entertainment district of old reshaping itself according to the new rules of selling. In San Francisco, Sony is now trying to push things one step farther, building a new complex that will be part multiplex theater, part high-tech arcade, part theme park, part food court and part showcase for the electronics that Sony and other companies sell. Conceived by Mickey Steinberg, an architect and planner who now heads something called Sony Retail Entertainment, the San Francisco project is intended as nothing less than the model for urban public space in this entertainment-consuming age.

The great stores of the past, for all their grandeur and pretension and willingness to indulge in fantasy architecture of their own, emerged from a culture that understood and honored the public realm. The stores were sometimes among the silliest manifestations of public life, and they were surely its most commercial, but there nonetheless was a kind of consistency between the values the great stores represented and those of the rest of the culture. Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade and its July 4th fireworks are among the few remnants of an age when stores sponsored major events that were not just merchandising promotions but also connections between the store and the very heart of civic life. It was no accident that department stores once sponsored war-bond sales: merchants believed they were providing an environment that would uplift people, even as it encouraged them to part with their money.

Is there such an earnest belief today? Not really. Stores now are dazzling, but facile; where once retailers offered a kind of civic nobility, now they bring forth quick entertainments. But the merchandising creativity remains. Has shopping faltered? Have stores succumbed to the new information technologies? Surely not. Inventive retailers have created new spirit in new settings, exploiting new technologies rather than giving in to them. America has watched as, in a matter of months, the store strikes back. Wanamaker's organ recitals may have, over the course of a century, turned into Niketown's three-minute videos. But now, as then, the idea is the same: come and be excited by a public place. And now, as then, the consumer is buying it.

Chronology/Photos: "Back to the Future -- A century of selling."

1896:
Siegel-Cooper's opens at Sixth Avenue and 18th Street, as large uptown "department" stores eclipse small dry goods stores in lower Manhattan. Known as "the big store," Siegel-Cooper's has a post office, a dental parlor, a theater, an art gallery and a nursery. (Siegel-Cooper's: Culver Pictures)

Wanamaker's, which pioneered the department store in Philadelphia, establishes abeachhead in New York in the former A.T. Stewart dry goods location, a five-story cast-iron building at Broadway and Astor Place.

1902:
Macy's moves from Manhattan's Ladies Mile shopping strip to 34th Street and Broadway, a burgeoning retail district. The store runs a steam wagonette between14th and 34th Streets for customers reluctant to make the trip.

Marshall Field's opens a 12-story store in Chicago, complete with six string orchestras.

J.C. Penney opens its first store -- called the Golden Rule -- in Kemmerer, Wyo.

1903:
Ehrich Brothers, a Manhattan store, stages the first Paris fashion show for its customers.

1905:
The Spiegel Company publishes its first catalogue -- 24 pages long -- in Chicago and mails it to customers within a 100-mile radius.

1907:
Herbert Marcus Sr., his sister, Carrie Marcus Neiman, and her husband, A.L. Neiman, open the first Neiman Marcus store in Dallas. (Neiman Marcus: Neiman Marcus)

1908:
Edward A. Filene begins selling excess merchandise in the basement of his father's store on Washington Street in Boston.

1912:
Department stores increase customer traffic by installing escalators.

F.W. Woolworth incorporates, with 596 stores across America and into Canada, 33 years after Frank Woolworth opened his "Great 5 Store" in Lancaster, Pa.

1914:
B. Altman follows Macy's north, to a 12-story Italian Renaissance building at Fifth Avenue and 34th Street, where its mechanized Christmas window displays draw huge holiday crowds; Arnold Constable joins the new hub.

1917:
Barnes & Noble opens its first bookstore in New York at 31 West 15th Street.

1920:
Frieda Loehmann, a former department store buyer, starts selling overstocks out of her Brooklyn home. (Frieda Loehmann: The Washington Post)

1923:
Barney Pressman opens a men's discount clothing store at Seventh Avenue and 17th Street. (Barney Pressman: Barneys New York)

1924:
Macy's holds its first Thanksgiving Day Parade. (Parade: The New York Times)

1925:
Sears, Roebuck and Company, which put out its first catalogue (for watches and jewelry) in 1888, opens its first store in Chicago.

1928:
Lord & Taylor organizes an in-store French decorative art show, filled with Picassos, Braques and Utrillos.

Bergdorf Goodman establishes the northernmost outpost of Fifth Avenue retailing by moving to a small shop at 58th Street.

1929:
Federated Department Stores becomes the first to form a holding company of family-owned department store chains -- including Abraham & Straus and F&R Lazarus & Company -- to increase market share and operating efficiency.

1930:
Department stores branch out, with Marshall Field's in the suburbs of Evanston, Lake Forest and Oak Park, Ill.; Saks Fifth Avenue in Chicago, and B. Altman in White Plains. (Marshall Field's in Lake Forest: Marshall Field's)

1931:
Bloomingdale's $3 million building opens, occupying the block bounded by 60th and 59th Streets from Lexington to Third Avenues.

1947:
Best, the store where the carriage trade outfitted its children, moves to a 12-story building at Fifth Avenue and 51st Street.

1950:
Northgate Shopping Center, the first open-air pedestrian mall, opens in Seattle.

1956:
Southdale, the first enclosed, climate-controlled mall, opens in Edina, a suburbof Minneapolis. (Southdale: Norton & Peel)

1957:
Baby Furniture and Toy Supermart, the original Toys "R" Us, opens in Washington.

1959:
Henri Bendel's main floor is rebuilt into nine shops on an "avenue" reminiscent of the Faubourg St. Honore in Paris.

1960:
Bloomingdale's begins its annual fall salutes to countries, starting with an extravaganza of Italian home furnishings.

1962:
Sam Walton opens his first discount store in Rogers, Ark.

1963:
Leslie Wexner opens the first Limited store in Columbus, Ohio.

1965:
Paraphernalia opens in Manhattan, ushering in a national wave of boutiques inspired by London's hip Carnaby Street.

1968:
Yves Saint Laurent opens Rive Gauche in Manhattan, taking over a Gristede's supermarket to become the first designer boutique on Madison Avenue. (Yves SaintLaurent: The New York Times)

1969:
The Gap opens its first store on Ocean Avenue in San Francisco. (The Gap: Gap)

1970:
Vanity Fair opens its employee store in Reading, Pa. to the public, kicking off the factory outlet craze.

1976:
Sol Price opens his members-only Price Club on Morena Boulevard in San Diego.

James Rouse opens his first downtown festival marketplace, Faneuil Hall (above) in Boston. (Faneuil Hall: Richard Lippenholz/The Rouse Company)

1977:
Giorgio DeLuca and Joel Dean open Dean & DeLuca at 121 Prince Street in New Yorkas SoHo begins to gentrify.

1978:
The first Home Depot opens in Decatur, Ga.

1980:
Castle Road Outlet Center, the first of its kind in the New York area, opens in Secaucus, N.J.

1985:
Home Shopping Network starts, followed within a year by QVC. (QVC: QVC)

L.L. Bean, the granddaddy of the mail-order business, starts an 800 number, riding the crest of the catalogue craze.

1986:
Polo/Ralph Lauren opens the first "life style" store on Madison Avenue at 72d Street in the old Rhinelander Mansion.

The first "power center" featuring discount department stores, off-price retailers and warehouse clubs, 280 Metro Center, opens in Colma, Calif.

1988:
Robert Campeau, a Canadian developer, acquires Federated, the owner of Bloomingdale's and other stores. In 1990, Federated enters Chapter 11 protection; in 1992, Macy's follows suit. In 1994, Macy's is taken over by a rehabilitated Federated.

1992:
America's largest mall, Mall of America, opens in Bloomington, Minn. (Mall Of America: The New York Times)

Bed Bath & Beyond, a superstore sweeping the country, opens in the old Siegel-Cooper building at Sixth Avenue between 18th and 19th Streets, as part ofa revival of Ladies Mile. (Bed Bath & Beyond: John Peden for The New York Times)

1993:
Barneys New York opens its uptown store at Madison Avenue and 61st Street.

The Warner Brothers Studio Store opens at 57th Street and Fifth Ave.

1995:
Calvin Klein opens his minimalist store in the old Morgan Guaranty Bank building at Madison Avenue and 60th Street.

1996:
Giorgio Armani and Valentino open new and grander stores on Madison Avenue, joined by Moschino, Prada and Etro; Gianni Versace opens on Fifth Avenue.

Virgin Megastore opens at 45th and Broadway.

The first Disney Store in Manhattan opens at 711 Fifth Avenue.

Loehmann's takes over part of Barneys 17th Street store.

Niketown opens on East 57th Street, on the site once occupied by Bonwit Teller and then by Galeries Lafayette.

Kmart moves into three floors of one of Wanamaker's old buildings near Astor Place.

Barneys files for Chapter 11 protection.

1997:
Playing catch-up with Amazon.com, the 2.5 million-title bookstore, which opened on the Internet in 1995, Barnes & Noble starts selling books on line with an offering of 1 million titles. They join retail sites like fashionmall.com, whichfeatures Donna Karan, Joseph Abboud and Gianfranco Ferre and internetmall.com, representing more than 25,000 merchants from brand names to artisans.

LINDA F. MAGYAR