Macy’s flower show 2016

The Macy's Flower   Festival in New York features flowers from around the world, placed by expert florists, all over the store. Macy’s   is  the largest department store company in the country.   Macy’s Inc., now a nationwide conglomerate of over 700 stores, began over 100 years ago as the R.H. Macy and Company Store.    It has occupied its Herald Square location in the center of New York  since 1902, a building that was named a National Historic Landmark back in 1978 and carries with a storied past. 
Macy’s Flower Show began in 1946 in San Francisco originally as a festival of fragrances with displays of potted plants and orchids intended to promote a cosmetics department fragrance.   
 
In New York , Macy’s Flower Show premiered in 1953. The show displayed fresh floral bouquets throughout the store. For the next 25 years, show attendees of the Macy’s Herald Square Flower Show entered a traditional English country-style garden through mock wrought iron estate gates installed on the Broadway side of the store. In  1966 the show was canceled because maintaining cut flowers was costly and time consuming. Eight years late the Flower  Show returned  to Herald Square .  The show theme remained unchanged until 2002, when it began focusing on high-concept, theatrical themes.

"Our annual celebration of spring this year will take us on a journey through our own backyards, one that is rich with magnificent landscapes that evolve from desert to tropics and everything in between,” said Mike Gansmoe, executive producer of Macy’s Flower Show. “America the Beautiful, this year’s theme, will give spectators the incredibly unique opportunity to experience highlights of the varied natural landscapes found in our nation, all at one location, blooming in unison.”

A  rotating list  of designers  creates    “Bouquet of the Day”, an extravagant centerpiece uniquely fashioned by each designer to interpret the show’s America the Beautiful theme.   


 The center of  Macy’s Flower Show 2016 in New York is  a unique floral interpretation of Lady Liberty’s iconic torch.
  It is now difficult to imagine the New York Harbor without Statue of Liberty-  this iconic American symbol.  The statue was a gift from the people of France to the people of the United States.

The statue’s torch-bearing right arm and head were constructed before the rest of the statue, and were exhibited in both France and the United States in the 1870s in order to aid in fundraising.



The torch has undergone three redesigns. Original design of the flame was for it to be constructed of copper and clad in gold. But the design was changed - the statue was planned to be used as a lighthouse.    The torch  was first changed so that portholes could be added and it could appear to be lit from within. But the light was too dim  to be effective. Later  Gutzon Borglum,  American artist and sculptor, who    is mostly  associated with his creation of the Mount Rushmore National Memorial at Mount Rushmore,  South Dakota,   made the second change by adding glass panels and copper framing. This design leaked terribly and caused further deterioration within the statue. Finally, as part of the 1986 restoration project, Bartholdi's original flame design was recreated and installed and is visible today.

"For the iconic garden, we replicated the Statue of Liberty torch and that alone took 9,000 blooms," said Mike Gansmoe, the executive producer of the show. "It takes a year and about 100 people working on it from concept to final execution," The show run through April 3, 2016