But his problem in this case is not white paper--at least white paper undefiled. The real problem is a perfectly good store building at the east end of the Macy plot--a building far too good and far too modern to be "scrapped"--in any recognized sense of the word. It was built to last all the way from half a century to a full century and its owners have not the slightest intention of pulling it down. It must remain the chief front of the enlarged Macy store. The caryatides upon either side of its main doors, the red star that surmounts them, must continue to look down into busy Broadway, as they have been looking for nearly two decades past. It happens, too, that the store itself was never designed for extensions toward the west. In the conception of its original architect there was a distinct section set out at the west end of the present building for purely service and non-selling purposes. These included, upon the ground-floor, the great tunnel and merchandise unloading docks for incoming trucks, similar ones for the outgoing merchandise, freight elevators a-plenty; and in between them and through them a truly vast variety of working provision, shops, offices, school and comfort rooms, and the like. A good feature, this section--which occupies almost the exact site of the former Koster & Bial Theater--but tremendously in the way when one comes to consider the extension of the store toward the west. A final factor of this particular reconstruction problem--and perhaps the greatest of all--lies in the fact that it must be carried forward while the store is doing its regular business. Even when the peak load of its traffic is reached--those fearfully hard weeks that immediately precede the Christmas holiday--the workaday routine of Macy's must not be seriously disturbed. Which complicates vastly the architect's problem. It is one thing to design and to erect a store building whose tenant does not approach the structure with his wares for sale until the merchant has given his final release, and another--infinitely harder--thing to build, and build efficiently, as business goes forward all the while. The machine as it grinds must be rebuilded. And all the while it must lose none of its efficiency. Yet, when all is said and done, an architect's life is made up of a number of things of this sort. And the associated architects of the new Macy store--Messrs. Robert D. Kohn and William S. Holden--have not permitted the overwhelming problem of its reconstruction to fill them with anything even remotely approaching a state of panic. For that is not an architect's way.