Posts from — October 2007

Crowds on Wall Street by sduffy on Flickr.

“I think what Lower Manhattan really needs is more pawn shops so, when the subprime carnage hits the Wall Street types hard, they can pawn their Rolex watches and Tiffany necklaces to buy food.”

The Times City Room reported on the opening of a new Tiffany & Co. store at 37 Wall Street today. Reactions are mixed–it’s either another great sign of the remarkable resurgence of Lower Manhattan in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 2001, or as one of the post’s commenters (quoted above) highlights, a resplendent reminder that we’re living through the last of the happy times before another real estate/Wall Street collapse.

The new store brings Tiffany & Co. back to its original neighborhood–it was founded as Tiffany & Young in 1837 by Charles Lewis Tiffany and John B. Young at 259 Broadway. It wasn’t until 1940 that the retailer found its way to its iconic location at 5th Avenue and 57th Street. About the move to the new Cross & Cross-designed digs at 57th Street (the flagship store had moved north several times, paralleling the city’s development–including sites at Union Square and up to 5th Avenue and 37th Street), Time reported that:

“Gone were the grey, morgue-like walls, the drab showcases, the cloistered darkness of the old store at 37th Street. Instead, large windows, scarcely marred by crossbars, admitted beams of sunlight. Even the clerks looked a little younger. But one thing had not changed, probably never would: the Tiffany tradition of muffled, almost clandestine conservatism.”

We’ll have to see if any of that “clandestine conservatism” rubs off on the free-wheeling hedge-fund managers who will be sure to frequent the new downtown store.