Design
The Secret Life of New York Storefronts, in Miniature
How Randy Hage creates dioramas of the city as it once was.
A city’s storefronts, to paraphrase a much-quoted proverb, are the windows to its soul. New York’s thousands upon thousands of retail façades have traditionally been as fabulous and motley as the city’s deepest self – in turns makeshift, perfectionist, self-aggrandizing, and practical.
Over the last 20 years or so, however, the city’s eyes have been glazing over. In neighborhood after neighborhood, what was once quirky and imperfect has been replaced by the smooth and bland. It’s like the city is getting a bad facelift that never ends.