Biography | Steve Jobs — He Put a Glass Cube on Fifth Avenue and Opened It All Night

On 19 May 2006, five years to the day after Tysons Corner, Apple opened a store under a 32-foot glass cube at 767 Fifth Avenue.

Doors opened at 6 p.m.

The shop itself sits in the basement of the General Motors Building.

The cube is the entrance.

It was the company's 147th store and its second in New York, after SoHo in 2002.

Steve Jobs had argued for a cube on the plaza with Bohlin Cywinski Jackson and the landlord, Harry Macklowe.

A full-size mock-up went up at 2 a.m. so the team could see that 40 feet was too tall; 32 feet stayed.

The original cube used 18 glass panels on each face.

A glass cylinder and spiral stair dropped shoppers into a floor with more than 100 Macs, nearly 200 iPods, and a 45-foot combined Genius Bar, iPod Bar and Studio.

Nearly 300 staff.

The store was to run 24 hours, 365 days.

In its first year it averaged about a million dollars a day.

The cube was rebuilt between 2017 and 2019 with fewer, larger panes.

The address did not move.

A visitor still walks into the plaza between 58th and 59th Streets and down through glass.

Cover: the original 18-panel cube on 20 May 2006, the morning after opening night.

Photo: Brian Oberkirch, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.