Situated in the heart of Manhattan, at the intersection between Broadway and Fifth Avenue, near Madison Square Park and opposite the Flatiron Building, Porcelanosa's new flagship store in New York, which was inaugurated today, is in the historic Commodore Criterion Building, recently remodelled by Foster+Partners.
The building - spanning six storeys with a total surface area of 1,500 square metres - dates back to 1918 and was designed by the architects Ely Jacques Kahn and Albert Buchman. For many years after the First World War, the Commodore Criterion was the headquarters of the General Outdoor Advertising Company, but the building reached the height of its fame as the headquarters of the A.C. Gilbert Company, the manufacturer of some of the first educational toys, such as Meccano, chemistry sets and telescopes.
After complete remodelling of the building's interior (the historic exterior is on the city's protected architecture list), the Commodore Criterion has now been renamed the Porcelanosa building, and is dedicated to architecture and interior design for top-level professionals from the New York metropolitan area.
