We were blown away by this Home Depot! We, like most, are accustomed to seeing the hardware chain's ubiquitous long, low suburban box stores set behind vast parking lots. This Home Depot in Chelsea however, which opened in 2004, inhabits a side-by-side pair of gorgeous street-oriented buildings formerly occupied by the Hasbro Toy Company.
The superbly kept historic building facades are stunning, but the innovation doesn't stop there. The hardware store's 105,000 square feet are distributed on three floors arranged around a grand day-lighted atrium. At checkout, a same-day home delivery option is available which caters to customers largely arriving by foot, bicycle or taxi. What may seem most radical to those used to seeing Home Depot's typical suburban models is that this urban store has no dedicated parking. The surrounding streets have parallel parking, and the closest vehicular parking facility is a small independently owned underground pay garage in the block across the street.
It is wonderful to see a Home Depot contributing so much vitality to a walkable urban neighborhood. For more information and pictures of this beautiful Chelsea Home Depot, see a New York Times review of the store here.
Looks like a beautiful building! I'm glad national chains like Home Depot have at least 1 store in a walkable context like this. Unfortunately they covered up all their storefront windows. That's a critical piece of the toolkit to help create a comfortable pedestrian environment on the adjacent sidewalks.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your critique! I agree with your observation - this urban Home Depot could certainly provide an even greater benefit to the vitality of its street if views through the ground floor windows were not impeded. Other photos I've seen of this Home Depot show the space behind these ground floor windows used for deep, well-lit display cases - providing interest for passers-by, but still not providing real "eyes on the street". (The day I walked by and snapped my photos, they had printed appliques over the glass in the windows so perhaps they were in the process of changing out their displays).
DeleteI think that awnings providing protection from the elements for pedestrians would also be a useful addition.
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