To celebrate its 175th year, Tiffany & Co. returned to its roots last week, opening a new store in downtown Manhattan, not far from the site of their very first store, which opened in 1837.
The store, Tiffany’s third in New York City, sits in the heart of the Soho shopping district, which is rivaled only by Fifth Avenue—where the company’s flagship store has been located since 1940—in its high-end fashions and tourist traffic.
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Fitting for its downtown location, the single story store, has a decidedly more urban look and feel than the Fifth Avenue flagship, while still maintaining the elegant atmosphere Tiffany stores are known for. The first room that greets customers who enter through the store’s main 97 Greene Street entrance is a diamond and gemstone jewelry salon that features walls lined with Amazonite, a stone similar in hue to the famous Tiffany Blue.
There are tiny touches throughout the store that evoke the company’s history, which is also being fetéd with a new jewelry collection for fall. The walls and carpet in the fine jewelry and engagement ring salon are adorned with a magnolia flower design that is based on the stained glass windows Louis Comfort Tiffany, son of the company’s founder, created for his Upper East Side home. In the fashion jewelry salon, a floor-to-ceiling bookcase displays original product prototypes, archival sketches, and jeweler’s crafting tools, as well as books about Tiffany’s history and the architecture, culture and fashion of New York—fitting tributes for a company that celebrates its 175th anniversary this fall.