When Life Gives You Scaffold, Make Something Beautiful!

Decorating a sidewalk bridge for Christmas was not a new idea for Matthew Schwam and his team at Holiday Image LLC.  They had done it before, but when Lord and Taylor called, he discovered that the bridge in front of their building was longer, taller and wider than anything he had previously designed.  The visual goal was to repurpose Lord and Taylor’s existing holiday program that launched in 2014 so that the bridge would become a cohesive part of the coveted traditional holiday windows presentation and at the same time deliver it’s own independent bold beautiful visual wow to the City. 

Holiday panels filled with custom lit greenery that once lined the 30 foot archway entrance of the building façade were repurposed as a five-foot header framing the top front and sides of the deck above the scaffold bridge, over 200 feet long.  Underneath the deck above the sidewalk, the design vision was to wrap every inch of metal until the only exposed material in site was custom lit holiday garland.   Each window would need to be framed and fully visible from Fifth Avenue. 

In a matter of days, over 23,000 linear feet of garland was lit with 563,000 LED lights and used to clad 5,750 feet of horizontal and vertical pipe posts.  A 3,680 square foot ceiling, also cladded with lit greenery was hung from existing I beams under the deck to create a fully enclosed look and feel when walking through.   Music was piped into the space for the public strolling on the sidewalk to fully engage in the experience.  6-9 foot lit trees installed in the existing Grand Central Partnership planters on the sidewalk.  5,016 additional white round LED light bulbs were draped under the dropped ceiling to finish the re-creation of the space.  The result is a one of a kind, magical, walk-through New York -holiday experience.

With so much holiday experience happening in New York City during December, there are many choices on how to soak up the season. Lord and Taylor’s walk through sidewalk holiday experience will put you in the holiday spirit the moment you step foot inside.  You may consider bringing someone you love and a cup of hot coco, block out the sounds of the City for a moment and just be inside the magic!