NM, JCP, L&T, Barney’s: Ghosts Of NYC Christmas Pasts

For some retailers it has been the best of times, for some the worst. But for yet others it’s been the end of times.

To all the unprecedented things that have happened in this year of new precedents, New York City shoppers can add the disappearance of some of the city’s best known and often iconic retail establishments this holiday shopping season, painfully clear during this past post-Thanksgiving weekend.

Even as the amount of business taking place online reaches all-time highs and so many retailers are struggling to stay open, the list of individual stores on the island of Manhattan that have closed since last Christmas is downright staggering. It’s not just their absence from the retail scene, it’s also what some of them brought to the event that is Christmas shopping:

• Certainly the most witty, sometimes political, occasionally naughty but always entertaining windows belonged to Barney’s on Madison Avenue. By this time last year the specialty retailer had already filed for bankruptcy but there were still hopes it would once more escape a total meltdown. The windows were pared down to reflect the financial situation but still brought smiles to shoppers looking for both bargains and bravado. Neither is to be found this year.

• At the other end of the holiday spectrum was Lord & Taylor, who’s iconic store on Fifth Avenue featured one of the city’s best-known holiday window displays. L&T was already gone a year ago but with the closing of the entire chain earlier in 2020, any hope that the flagship would return is gone and passers-by can only remember the animated figures and carefully ordered path one took to take it all in.

• JCPenney’s
JCP
Herald Square store, which was closed earlier this year as part of a wave of more than 100 shutdowns as the chain filed for bankruptcy, didn’t really have display windows, buried deep within the bowels of the Manhattan Mall shopping complex. More corporate showpiece than retail location onto itself, the Herald Square location has had a poor record of late: before JCP became the anchor tenant for a truncated mall the space housed an A&S and before that it was the long-time Gimbels flagship. Bad retail karma for sure.

• The Neiman Marcus store in Hudson Yards was barely around long enough to celebrate more than one Christmas, caught up in that retailer’s chapter 11 filing this year. Whatever holiday décor it had could only be found up five escalators rides (the opposite geographic challenge from Penney), which no doubt contributed to more than just its visual discomfort. That the complex’s owners have talked about converting the former store into office use tells you all you need to know about its viability as retail space.

• These aren’t the only ghosts from Christmas past. Kmart’s 34^th Street store is gone, its labyrinth of basements and sub-basements no longer challenging commuters and shoppers navigating their way for Blue Light Specials. The retailer’s other Manhattan location, downtown off Astor Place, remains open but given the steady ongoing demise of the brand — there are less than 30 Kmart stores left in the world – it only seems a matter of time before that blue light is turned off too.

• Modell’s, the sporting goods chain that couldn’t even run a decent going out of business sale because of the pandemic, is gone too. So too are a pair of the City’s best and most famous specialty stores: Jeffrey, the Atlanta import that was the pioneer in the Meatpacking District retailing movement, and Opening Ceremony, who’s several Manhattan locations could be counted on for the latest in whatever was the latest.

And none of this includes all the dozens of individual specialty stores, some independently owned and others part of chains like The Gap, Frye, Bed Bath & Beyond
BBBY
and Victoria’s Secret. To say nothing of all the restaurants, delis, bodegas and food carts that are gone.

Despite all the tales of doom about the nation’s cities, they will come back and New York City will no doubt lead the way. But this year, this Christmas, this holiday shopping season, it is most certainly very much not a far, far better thing.