Touted by the New York Times as “the last great clothing store,” Boyds has provided individualized attention to retail shoppers since 1938. Boyds moved to their new location, a five-story limestone building, in 1990. With a new focus on women’s apparel, Boyds retained Clemens Construction to perform a full fit-out of their retail, office and back-of-house spaces as well as provide an historic restoration to the entire storefront, canopy and façade including infill, patching and cleaning of the cornice work.
The $7.6 Million project was completed in five phases and while the store remained fully operational. In collaboration with Boyds, Clemens carefully scheduled each phase to ensure that employees would maintain access to their storage spaces, that swing spaces were available for each retail department and that customers would not notice the presence of construction in the store.
Clemens renewed many of the historic details of the interior, including the reuse of existing decorative columns that support the mezzanine level and provide a new, modern entry. Clemens restored original plaster details and poured new concrete on damaged column bases and faux finished them to look like marble, so they were indistinguishable from the original pieces. Wood trim was infilled by Clemens’ millworkers and the exterior cornice was cleaned, patched and brought back to its original grandeur..
