When Shopping Was Sociable

I refer to the Brooklyn Flea, quartered on Sundays in the spectacular hall and vault of the Williamsburg Savings Bank Tower. It is a space Ben Thompson would have loved. He might have turned the long central nave into the world’s largest open-plan living room through judicious use of rugs, lamps and screens; transformed the teller’s side stalls into toy nooks or Marimekko displays. The small spaces would be bursting with color, the large one largely neutral. If allowed, surely he would have cut a spiraling staircase, something like the one in Apple’s new Upper West Side store, down from the hall and into the vault below, allowing the scents of coffee, baklava, egg sandwiches and lobster rolls to waft up.

The flea, because of its temporary status and atomized nature, can’t take charge of the room, which is a loss. (Whereas the architect of the new Limelight Marketplace, tagged “a festival of shops” and clearly Faneuil Hall-inspired, has taken far too much charge of the former church. Once you are inside, it is hard to see the stained glass windows for the awnings, display cases, and open-tread staircases scissoring past them. Not to mention the dreadful white paint job.) To have someone like Thompson mixing and matching the wares into home-like vignettes would provide some visual drama at floor level, and more focus for the vendors. In the booths you find the same searching eye, range of goods new and old, crafted here and abroad, small-scale and statement pieces as were available at D/R. But Thompson knew how to show them to best advantage.

A blending of all three might bring us closer to Thompson’s original idea of the mix: Apple’s clear sense of design, Limelight’s blend of culinary and visual treats, the flea’s feeling of community. For the Thompsons never meant D/R or Faneuil Hall to be just about sales: the point was to provide an opportunity for encounters, bringing people out of their shells and into parts of the city that had been underutilized. They also wanted to make the best of design accessible, not let it get shut up in a museum or a to-the-trade showroom. Touching the goods was an essential part of attracting and educating the consumer. The Thompsons figured out a way for preservation to feel like a festival, not a final exam. And every time we eat an Asia Dog in a bank vault, or buy shoes in a nave, we feel their legacy.