One of their pioneering ideas was the installation of Christmas windows. It was the start of a treasured New York City tradition that would sweep the country.
Lord & Taylor’s holiday windows put shoppers in the Christmas spirit and, as the cousins knew, that spirit would translate into spending. Before the turn of the century, most of the grand emporiums would dress their wide show windows with Christmas displays.
On Christmas Eve, 1879, The New York Times reported that “Through the slush and the mud the gayly-dressed ladies passed, and those who had no purchases to make did not disdain to stand and look into the Christmas windows. Every store on the street displayed in its windows wreaths of holly or of laurel, and the entire scene spoke of the coming Christmas.”
In 1902 the newspaper reported on the joyful affect of the Christmas windows on “factory girls” and underprivileged children. “It was no uncommon sight to see a bevy of them at a brilliantly lighted window…The only unattended children who were out in the crowd were grimy little ragamuffins of both sexes who had filtered in from the tenement house districts to gloat on the rare shows in the display windows and exchange in quaint vernacular comment on the eye feasts.”
The joy of the Christmas window was not always without misfortune. Four days before Christmas in 1901 Christopher Hendricks lit the gas burners that illuminated his windows, catching the display on fire and burning down his store at a cost of $3000.
By the middle of the 20th Century department store Christmas windows were as much a part of the New York Christmas season as carols and street corner Santas. In 1959 The Times said that “more than a million eyes have stared at the Christmas windows of the city’s department stores.” By the end of the century that number would be multiplied many times over.
|Lord & Taylor window from 2008|
|A scene from Macy's "Miracle on 34th Street" windows|
The appeal of the Manhattan department store windows is such that velvet ropes are installed to control the lines of tourists and New Yorkers alike. For them Christmas would not be Christmas without the festive, animated windows that, for one or two months a year, do not attempt to sell anything, but simply make the viewer a child again.