The under-construction Brooklyn flagship of the iconic French luxury brand Hermès has been making waves on social media since its unveiling from scaffolding in recent weeks.
Standing prominently on a high-traffic corner in Williamsburg, the storefront at 111 North 6th Street gives the impression of a cluster of 19th-century brick buildings, complete with bricked-over windows and striking modern openings cut into the facade. But it’s entirely new.
Not everyone is in on the joke.
“Those large windows are an abomination,” “agreed,” “so bad” were some of the comments on an Instagram post from observer of neighborhood businesses Williamsburgbedford.
“Preserving historical design while updating for modern use. The best form of renovation,” said a commenter on a Reddit post in the R/Bad Architecture feed.
“Seems like a really cool way to preserve historic neighborhood character while also getting big windows,” said a poster on another Reddit thread.
Another commenter clarified: “This is a brand new building. They tore down the original and built a fake old building in its place.”
Another said: “I don’t understand this building. Is it supposed to look like someone bricked in the windows of an old building and then cut into them with a big aluminum frame window? Why would you build from scratch something that looks like a cheaply and insensitively renovated old building? Is this ironic architecture?”
But others liked it: “Gotta say this is a pretty nice looking building, even if it is selling a ‘look’ of abandonment while stocking items I could never afford.”
Building Studio Architects, known for adaptive reuse as well as all kinds of projects from religious to housing, is designing the store for property owner L3 Capital, according to YIMBY, although Mancini Duffy is the architect of record, permits show. The real estate investment firm in recent years has acquired a slew of commercial properties in Williamsburg, including some previously belonging to Red Sky Capital. Hermès is leasing the property from L3, whose other tenants in the neighborhood include Chanel, Everlane, Google, and Madewell. Construction could wrap in 2025 or 2026, according to L3’s website.
“New or renovated, all of our architectural projects share a commitment to contextual design, buildings that show a devotion to the industrial brick and steel window character of the neighborhood,” says a website blurb from the architect about their work with owner L3 Capital. “Detailed brickwork inspired by this traditional building stock is integrated into many of our projects for L3.”
The two-story red brick building replaces a shorter two-story brick building with big multi-pane steel windows that appeared after the 1980s tax photo. (It may have been an update of a three-story 19th-century brick building that originally stood on the corner, old photos show.) What appears to be an adjoining three-story black brick building is also part of the same development.
The new store is rising on what was once three separate tax lots, 111 to 115 North 6th Street. Like others on the street, the buildings housed meatpackers in the early 20th century.
More recently, the corner was home to Marine Layer and Gant, and before that, fittingly, The Future Perfect. The innovative home-goods store, which has since decamped to Manhattan, showcased creative Brooklyn design, including modern designs and messages screen printed and layered over vintage china — not unlike the apparent superimposing of modern over old here.
Just down the block at 91 North 6th Street, an Hermès popup with limited inventory opened in 2023. Apart from the temporary venue, the new shop will be the brand’s first outpost in Brooklyn. (It has three locations in Manhattan.)
The new building is an arresting sight on a prominent corner in what was once a meatpacking district and is now a prime shopping street. The Soho-ization of Williamsburg since the historic but derelict semi-industrial neighborhood was rezoned in 2005 has been extensively covered here and elsewhere.
It’s also a bit reminiscent of the nearby Domino Sugar factory, a landmarked mid 19th-century red brick factory that was turned into a shell encasing a modern glassy office building.
Perhaps Hermès will say the building is a metaphor for the brand — blending the new and old, the traditional with the forward thinking — adapted to a particular place, Williamsburg, where the old is constantly being altered, not always sympathetically, or outright replaced.
This story first appeared on Brooklyn Paper’s sister site Brownstoner