Joseph Magnin store in Stonestown | Welton Becket & Assoc. Architects | L.F. Robinson - structural engineer | Deane & Hill - mechanical engineer

DESIGN OF LUXURY STORES and shopping centers by the Welton Becket office has come to be a modern success story. This Joseph Magnin store is the latest of a group that includes Bullock's Pasadena, Bullock's Westwood, in southern California, Stonestown Shopping Center, and Hillsdale and Stanford shop- ping centers. This latest product inevitably takes on the added significance of considerable momentum in store design and decorating. Incidentally, the architectural group executed the interior design and decor including all furnishings, fixtures and appointments from ash stands to monogrammed wallpaper.

The building, of reinforced concrete with exterior facing of Travertine, consists of a main floor, basement and mezzanine. All merchandise deliveries are made through a tunnel which terminates at a truck loading dock adjacent to the store's basement.

One of the interesting features is the dual-purpose display and selling rooms, of which there are four. During the selling hours these rooms serve as sales and fitting rooms; in the evening a series of sliding doors converts them into sidewalk display rooms. While the building is contemporary in concept and expression, there is no dedicated dogma in it. One of the display-selling rooms, for example, is done in "fantastic Victorian," another in "Louis XVI." Interiors throughout the store exhibit wide variety of styling and a good deal of glamorized grandeur, all carefully calculated to capture feminine interest and to arouse that never-underestimated power of a woman.