Went to downtown Brooklyn today to the old Abraham & Straus complex yesterday, a varying but high quality mix of Victorian cast iron, romanesque brownstone and iron spot brick and European expressionist art deco, all fighting for air on the tinny hubbub of the cheap stores ("JIMMY JAZZZ!!") on the Fulton Mall, the struggling Great Society-type conversion of Fulton Street into a pedestrian mall.
Notwithstanding the original vision, Fulton is still a strip of low-income/no-income stores, most of which have plastered all sorts of crap over perfectly competent 19th and early 20th century retail buildings, but that crime is hardly unique to the Borough of Churches.
Macy's absorbed A&S in the 1990's, and soldiers on in the usual circumstances - a long snaking line leading up to a single salesperson: "All Silver Jewelry HALF OFF!!!"
Most big department stores have done a good job erasing their original interiors, but A&S lagged, and there are a number of nice touches still undamaged. The elevator lobby is a double ellipse, with two sextets of nickeled-bronze zig-zag modern elevator doors facing each other within polished dark marble frames, under several zig-zag light fixtures. The nicest touch are small frosted glass doors, curved, set just below the lintel on either side of the doors. These are worked very closely with floral and other Lalique-style details - the hinging indicates they were indicator lights, probably glowing green for up and red for down or something.
Over the inside of the Fulton Street entrance run several panels of carefully worked polished grey marble, probably Rockport. In relief so low you could be stationed at the doors for several years and not notice - as the security guard was the other day - there is a mechanistic/floral relief of chains, tires, oak leaves, spirals and other shapes.
That entrance is three bays wide. The left and central bays had conventional revolving doors, of a recent date. But on the right I had one of the best door experiences of my life. I didn't notice until I came back in again - the four panels were curved outward (from the point of view of the person). Instead of pushing against a flat assembly of glass and steel - like a flat-bladed waterwheel- here the customer is nominally enclosed in a curved telephone both, as it were - like a turbine blade - an agreeable, even pleasurable passage.
I have never before seen curved revolving doors - although I realize the Metropolitan Transit Authority has, over the last decade or so, converted the full-height turnstiles used when stations are closed from flat to curved, also. This door is on its last legs, with one of the four leaves partly sprung. Take the subway to the Nevins Street stop.
Best, Christopher