Go towards the light

Unfortunately, that oasis goes away quickly when you cross the line from the Macy's alcove to the Amazon vestibule. Instead of being bright and light, the Amazon space is dark and oppressive -- and it somehow manages that despite having a higher ceiling! It appears that, for some unfathomable reason, the designers of the Amazon offices decided to go for an industrial look, and decided that the way to do so would be to go for a dark stained concrete floor and dark exposed ceiling. Ugh. No thanks. 

I'll readily admit that I typically like concrete floors and exposed ceilings when it comes to stores. To avoid sounding too hypocritical, I suppose I should explain why this is different to me. First, in retail, this look is typically applied in stores with high ceilings. The ceiling might be too low for it to look good here (though I've probably seen something similar in stores with similar ceiling heights, I'll admit). Second, in stores, this look is typically used to make a store look bright and airy, typically with lighter concrete floors and almost always with white-painted ceilings. Here, the designers went for the opposite effect, which just looks oppressive. I've seen a similar design used in some stores (most notably, some Walmarts from I believe sometime in the early 2000s), and I don't like it there either. Third, and most importantly, those stores are modern buildings built to look that way. This is a early-20th-century building that was never supposed to have an industrial look to it, and gutting the building to get it to look like a warehouse just seems wrong to me! I know there wasn't a lot of history left inside this building apart from the main floor, but still, ugh. 

Oh, and to end this rant with a positive note, I do really like the backlit Macy's sign here! It's a bit amusing, though, that they clearly installed a sign that would typically be used for a mall entrance, but hey, it works!