April 12, 2021

Heliotrope Architects designs NYC Filson store

Photo by Kevin Scott [enlarge]

The NYC Filson store occupies a 4,000-square-foot former mattress store in an 1800s brownstone.

Filson's New York flagship store in Midtown Manhattan is one of 13 of the company's stores that Seattle-based Heliotrope Architects has designed.

The NYC store opened in November 2018 at 876 Broadway. It occupies a 4,000-square-foot former mattress store in an 1800s brownstone near Union Square.

C.C. Filson is an American privately owned outfitter and manufacturer of goods for outdoor enthusiasts. The Seattle-based company designs, manufactures, distributes and sells men's and women's outdoor clothing, accessories and luggage.

In a press release, Heliotrope said the NYC flagship store showcases the product line in an immersive experience that brings the brand to life.

To create the store, Filson started by buying an abandoned barn in Oregon that the project team found for sale online. The team dismantled it and shipped the rough-hewn wood siding, posts and beams to Nelson, B.C., the home of Spearhead, a specialty fabricator.

The team worked in collaboration with Spearhead to use this salvaged material, and conceived of a post-and-beam “barn interior” that contractor Schimenti constructed inside the store's 18-feet-tall, double-height entry.

Heliotrope said that inside this “barn” the team built custom, solid fir and painted wood display cabinets to showcase the men's product lines, and mounted to the post-and-beam salvaged wood structure above, a gallery of artifacts, hunting decoys, canoe shells, logging equipment, vintage images and maps that evoke the qualities of a Darius Kinsey photograph.

The women's product line is on the mezzanine overlooking the “barn,” and is conceived of as the sitting room of an old house. A half-round, built-in, sofa and big round chunky wood coffee table piled with books provides a moment of shopping respite. The mezzanine ceilings are coffered in painted wood and smoked mirror glass. The floors are salvaged pine from York, Pennsylvania.

Filson was founded in 1897 to meet the needs of prospectors traveling through Seattle on their way to the Klondike Gold Rush.

Heliotrope said the elements of the design in the NYC store work together like a timeline bringing the visitor to different moments and places from the Filson legacy. They take their cues from inspiration as diverse as Jack London's “Call of the Wild,” the mysterious nooks and crannies found in Victorian-era natural history museums and Robert Altman's McCabe and Mrs. Miller.

Besides architecture, Heliotrope Architects designed the interiors for the store. Lighting is by Invisible Circus.

Filson has 15 stores in the U.S., Vancouver, B.C., and Tokyo, Japan. Heliotrope designed all those stores except two, in Washington, D.C., and Tokyo.

Filson's Seattle stores opened at 5101 Ballard Ave. in 2016, and at 1741 First Ave. S. in 2015.