New York Tradition : Firm Brightens the Holiday Windows on 5th Avenue

Santa should have it so good. The workers look up from their hammers and paintbrushes for a second and smile.

These helpers--not quite Santa’s North Pole variety--are close to their big delivery. They help Spaeth Design create the mechanical Christmas displays for Lord & Taylor and Saks in New York City. While Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade opens the holiday season, the decorated windows on Fifth Avenue attract thousands of admirers until after New Year’s.

Christmas has kept Spaeth Design busy for more than 45 years. “We started at the kitchen table,” said Walter Spaeth, 75. Working with preserved foliage, the Spaeths created such displays as the cherry trees used by John Wanamaker, the Philadelphia department store. Christmas meant traditional evergreen trim, although Dorothy Spaeth recalled that “sometimes we made displays that were all white or constructed from feathers.” One winter, Lord & Taylor wanted snow-covered trees, and Spaeth toyed with a machine until it spurted natural-looking flakes.

Their son David, once a mechanical engineer at Grumman, joined his parents in 1976. As the elder Spaeth observed: “Christmas displays are more fun than drawing motor parts.”

“My sister and I used to help my parents unwrap ornaments,” recalled David Spaeth, 44. While Spaeth Design still decorates lobbies for offices and hotels, it now specializes in mechanical displays.

A visitor to Spaeth Design enters what appears to be a storybook village, but soon sees that creating fantasy requires hard work. There’s a room filled with evergreen, then there’s a workroom with shelves of rubber dolls--all sizes, all naked and all bald. Dozens of costumed figures await final touches, and Gundt bears sit next to Santas. Rosebud, a monster from the film “FX,” guards the model-maker’s cubicle.

The largest room is as big as a school gym, but the decorations in it are not for a prom. On one side, carpenters concentrate on the displays for Saks Fifth Avenue. This Christmas, Saks presents “The Velveteen Rabbit,” a children’s story by Margery Williams. The message remains wreathed with holiday hope: “If you love something long and hard enough, it will become real.”

Richard Pollard, Spaeth’s director of design, helped Saks portray the tale in six dioramas. The crowds may be so charmed by the boy and his velveteen rabbit that they overlook Pollard’s use of an arts-and-craft motif--William Morris designs, stained glass and carved woodwork. Pollard, a master of detail, also supervises workers who must scale down last year’s New York displays--children playing with trains--to fit the windows of the Saks in Chicago.

Quite good at making the stuff of storybooks come alive, Spaeth Design is equally adept at rendering reality, especially the New York City scenes that Lord & Taylor has showcased since 1983. This year’s “Relive the Glory of Art Deco New York” highlights landmarks built in the 1930s: the Daily News lobby with its globe centerpiece, the Chrysler Building’s observation lounge, Esrow Winter’s mural “The Fountain of Youth” in the grand foyer at Radio City Music Hall and the glamorous Rainbow Room.

“We picked the ‘30s because of nostalgia. If people don’t remember those years, they at least know about them,” said Ken Schleimann, director of visual merchandising at Lord & Taylor.

The windows, considered a “gift to the city,” are exquisite period pieces. Pollard’s staff researched decorative details that might have been lost over the years. Then Spaeth Design selected a view that best suited the window space. Against the realistic backdrops, there are touches of whimsy: Santa plays maracas under the Rainbow Room’s grand chandelier; a man sells souvenir Chrysler Buildings; a boy dressed as Flash Gordon aims a ray gun, and the Radio City Music Hall Santa reins in a team of Rockettes who make stunning Dancers and Prancers.

Lord & Taylor’s windows use more than 90 figures, none taller than 21 inches. Their movements are powered by a motor smaller than a man’s fist. Saks uses bigger figures: Adults are 54 inches tall. Last year, Spaeth computerized the pneumatic movements to make the larger figures seem more natural.

It takes a few days to install the displays, usually with the last-minute drama that accompanies a Broadway opening. Work began in January when the stores selected themes, and fabrication started in July. Spaeth won’t discuss costs, but one estimate suggests that each window costs about $60,000.

The Spaeths make holiday visits to their displays and often decorate their homes at the last minute. A touch of humbug? Actually, Spaeth Design seems to have mastered the Dickens’ lesson for Scrooge--to keep Christmas year-round.