The nine stories of the new addition which will rise tower-like above
the parent building are destined to be used entirely for non-selling
functions. Thus from the architects' plans we see the executive and
financial offices, including that of advertising upon the thirteenth and
the fifteenth floors of this super-cupola; and the store's own great
laundry upon the high nineteenth. The department of training and the
bureau of planning, with an assembly room, will share the sixteenth. The
more purely recreational features, however, the Men's Club and the
Community Club and the lounging rooms and library, are placed as low as
the accessible eighth floor. The general manager's and employment
offices will be as low as the second mezzanine--for obvious reasons of
convenience.
None of these departments will be hampered for a long time to come, as
they have been hampered for a number of years past, by a fearful lack of
elbow room. The new plans have provided for abundant facilities of this
and every other sort. The employees' cafeterias also are to go into the
new section--also upon the eighth, or public restaurant floor. They will
be greatly enlarged over their present capacity.
These non-selling facilities are given their own elevator service from
the street; a separate and distinct entrance there. The purpose of this
last quickly becomes evident. There are many occasions--nights and
Sundays even--when some or all of the recreation facilities are in use
far beyond the regular store hours. Access to them, entirely free and
separate from the store itself, is an enormous working convenience, and
the new Macy's has been planned to be filled with working conveniences.
The elevator as well as the escalator will play a vastly important part
in the fabrication of the new Macy's. The one has by no means been
overshadowed by the growing importance of the other. There are to be in
all fifty-six elevators, of one type or another, in the reconstructed
building. Of all these none is more interesting than the ingenious lifts
by which whole motor trucks, laden as well as empty, are carried into
the structure, up eleven floors to the merchandising reception rooms and
down into the basement and sub-basement for filling for the city
delivery.
Now are we back again to the handling of that merchandise stream which
we first began to consider but a moment ago. At the beginning we can
make assertion that in the entire history of retail selling no more
ingenious scheme has been devised for the orderly and rapid movement of
goods in and out of a department-store.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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