Lighting, ventilation, plumbing, all these received in turn the most careful consideration and planning. For instance, it was determined quite early in the progress of the planning for the new Macy store that it should be ventilated entirely by great fans, which, sucking the air in ducts down from the roof, would heat it or cool it, as the necessities of the season might demand, before distributing it through another duct to the working floors of the building. In this way the close and stuffy atmosphere somewhat common to old-time department stores when filled with patrons was entirely obviated in this new one. When we come to the consideration of the everyday workings of the Macy store today we shall see how well these architects of twenty years ago planned its details. We shall not see, however, one of the most interesting of them. When it was originally builded, by far the greater part of its ninth floor was devoted to a huge exhibition hall. Within a short time this room was in a fair way to become as famous as the larger auditorium of Madison Square Garden. In it were held poultry-shows, flower shows, even one of the very first automobile shows. Within a few years after its opening, however, the business of the store had grown to such proportions that it was found necessary to give its great space to the more mundane business of direct selling. The problem of the corner tip there at Thirty-fourth and Broadway was quickly overcome. If the new owner of that point had counted upon the new store which completely encircled him turning tens of thousands of folk past it each day he was doomed to disappointment. For Macy's made its own corner by means of a broad arcade entirely within the cover of its own huge roof; an inside street, lined with show-windows upon either side and giving, in wet weather as well as fine, a dry and handsome passageway direct from Broadway into Thirty-fourth Street. The original suggestion for such an arcade came in an anonymous letter to the original architects of the building. Only within the past year or two has this passageway been abandoned. The demands of the business for more elbow-room are voracious and apparently unceasing. And the space that the arcade consumed became entirely too great to be used any longer for such a purpose.