Printemps Is Moving Into One Wall Street

Photo-Illustration: Curbed; Photo: Alamy

With apologies to a few other strong contenders (70 Pine, 26 Broadway), the closest thing the Financial District has to an architectural mascot is almost certainly 1 Wall Street. Designed by Ralph Thomas Walker — not quite a household name today, though once declared “the architect of the century” by the American Institute of Architects — the 50-story high-rise completed in 1931 has all the classic Deco details, the landmarked limestone façade, and the general sense of glamorous menace that you would want from a tower of moneymaking power. And then there’s that address: You just can’t beat No. 1.

1 Wall is also home to the Red Room. Created as the lobby for the building’s original anchor tenant, commercial bank Irving Trust, the 33-foot-high-ceilinged space at the building’s northwest corner is an over-the-top dream of period pizzazz that makes Baz Luhrmann’s Gatsby look like a work of sober realism. With its double-height windows, angular coving, and titular crimson walls streaked with gold mosaic, the room is among the most stunning early-20th-century environments in the city — though few in the current century have had a chance to see it, since it’s been off-limits to the general public since 2001. Over the last 16 months, developer Harry Macklowe, who acquired the building in 2014, had his team restore it, and their efforts were crowned last month with a very special kind of recognition: The Landmarks Preservation Commission has just designated the Red Room a landmark, making it the city’s 123rd legally protected architectural interior.

From left: Photo: Courtesy NYC Landmarks Preservation ComissionPhoto: Courtesy NYC Landmarks Preservation Comission

From top: Photo: Courtesy NYC Landmarks Preservation ComissionPhoto: Courtesy NYC Landmarks Preservation Comission

The move comes just in time for the next phase in the space’s history. Following an extensive retooling of 1 Wall into residential condominiums (the biggest office-to-residential conversion project completed in the city), Macklowe has leased the Red Room and a 55,000-square-foot space over two levels to Printemps, one of France’s oldest and most legendary department stores. This will be the brand’s only American location and effectively be the face of the building on Wall Street. The decision to bring the store to New York, and to 1 Wall in particular, was in some sense a natural one: Printemps’s headquarters on the Boulevard Haussmann in Paris is among the French capital’s more astounding 19th-century buildings, giving the company more than a little experience selling high-end goods in a historic landmark. That neighborhood was also in flux in 1865 when the first store was founded, as the Financial District is now, and the founders are credited as being early to invest in that area.

The Printemps flagship on Boulevard Haussmann in Paris is a historical landmark. Photo: Pierre Suu/Getty/Getty Images

To do the same thing downtown, Printemps has brought on board a designer who has also made a big push into New York lately. Laura Gonzalez has worked on other New York stores, including the Cartier Mansion on Fifth Avenue; in June she decided to open up her own showroom, Galerie Laura Gonzalez, on Franklin Street in June. “What we have is not just our collection; it’s a big selection of art,” says the designer. “We wanted to make it a mix. Like New York.” Featuring craft-oriented work like her plush yet funky Mawu Hana chairs, as well as bold sculptural pieces like a Laurent Dufour fireplace, the space feels meticulously put together yet comfortable. Gonzalez says she wanted it to feel “sexy but strong,” a quality that she sees connecting New York and Paris, and which she wants to bring to the Red Room.

It’s a space for which the designer has a special feeling; as she notes, “It’s a full work done by a woman.” One of prewar design’s lesser known names, Hildreth Meière was a muralist, mosaicist, and Deco icon who was brought on by Walker to do the tilework there. For those who haven’t been to the Red Room, they can see her work all over New York and beyond, from the allegorical figures on the Radio City Music Hall façade to the Native American–inspired ceramic floors of the Nebraska State Capitol. In the Red Room, the artisan’s 13,000 square feet of tile cover every inch of the ceilings and walls, patterned in gilded abstract geometries that ripple lightning-like across every surface. “When you first discover it, it’s like a shock,” says Gonzalez.

The designer’s empathy for her predecessor will definitely come in handy, as she and her client will have to move very gently into their new digs. Lilla Smith, Macklowe’s director of architecture and design, has been working on 1 Wall ever since it entered the company’s portfolio, overseeing the $1 million restoration of the Red Room. “It was never going to be the entry to the apartments,” she says: The plan from the beginning had been to turn the onetime lobby into retail, though the team “didn’t know who would take it.” Smith and her team installed a near-invisible fire-suppression system in the space, dug up some of Meière’s spare tiles from deep storage, and reshuffled the floor plates in the adjacent 1965 extension to provide additional square footage — part of which will be occupied by Printemps and part of it by a Whole Foods. The result helped get the Red Room the LPC nod, ensuring that anything Printemps might do will have to be subtle, reversible, and not likely to damage any of the finishes and fixtures.

While Gonzalez hasn’t released any definitive scheme for the new store as yet, minimal impact certainly appears to be her objective. “It’s a big challenge,” says the designer. “It will really be a concept store; everything has to be bespoke, a universe.” But this doesn’t mean everything will be created anew for the store; as she told WWD, along with 3-D printed objects, she plans to use upcycled materials from fashion shows to create furniture and other elements. The old titans of American industry might be a little shocked to find their grandest entryway filled with perfume counters and scarf displays, but Gonzalez seems to be aiming for a different well-heeled Fidi clientele, namely the occupants of the studio-to-four-bedroom condos upstairs, currently on sale starting at about $900,000. “It’s going to be a place to live, not just a place to buy,” the designer says.