What I Love About New York: Apple; A New Account on the Upper East Side

Hi Readers! Today the Apple Store opened it's brand new Upper East Side location! The new Apple store is located on the historical block of 74th and Madison Avenue.

This Apple Store is different from others because it has a huge amount of history behind the building. Architect Henry O. Chapman built this $6,000 limestone building (6 million dollars today) in 1921 for the United States Mortgage and Trust Company. Chemical bank merged with United States Mortgage and Trust in 1929 and stayed at this location until Chemical bank acquired Chase Manhattan Corporation (but adopted Chase's better known name) in 1996. The bank closed in 2002 and most recently contained luxury hand retailer VBH. Apple has been renovating this building since October 2014.

The building early on won "Best Design for New Constructed Building" when completed in 1922 by The Fifth Avenue Association. It featured a Knoxville marble entrance and an amazing bank vault (which is still here today).

Apple was searching many spaces on the Upper East Side when they approached this place as a possible location. They decided to pick it because it was so grand and elegant.

In honor of today's grand opening of the Upper East Side location, the Apple "geniuses" handed out books as customers entered the store. The book titled "Portraits of the Upper East Side", was related to the "Shot on an IPhone 6" campaign that featured photos except this book featured only pictures of the Upper East Side by local artists.

Above is an example of a photograph taken on East 76 Street and Madison Avenue. When I walked into the new store, I noticed the beautiful chandeliers which Apple recreated from photos of the original bank. I also liked that they used the original paint color of the bank on the walls and the original floor too, with Bottocino marble. There were also the gorgeous black and white photos of Upoer East side portraits with the street they were taken on listed below.

I loved the layout of the store with the newer products closer to the front and older products off to the side.

Since I'm getting the Apple watch sport as an upcoming gift, I went to see the Apple Watch stand near the entrance of the store.

There I met an Apple "genius" named CJ, who was very informative and nice. He told me a lot about the Apple Watch, and gave my family and I advice that ordering the Apple Watch online would probably arrive quicker than continuing to wait to purchase it in an Apple Store. CJ has a premium-priced stainless steel Apple Watch which he just got a few days ago and loves it!

He enjoys texting and emailing right on his watch and CJ uses the watch to monitor his heart rate too. CJ told us his favorite part of the store was the lower level where the vault and accessories are, so we decided to see it!

When we walked down the beautiful original marble stairs, we saw the original bank vault.

Inside the vault, was a soon to be multi-purpose room which will be used for meetings, classroom education and Apple watch try-ons. By appointment you can try on the gold Apple watch that starts at $10,000!! The vault was also filled with some devices, a couch, an even a TV!

While I relaxed on the couch, the TV played a movie version of the "Portraits of the Upper East Side" book. Also on the lower level were accessories and an a Apple TV showcase.

I found cool wood head mannequins which displayed Beats by Dre headphones (which are now owned by Apple). I enjoyed rocking out to music with these awesome headphones.