Santa really had to tighten his belt!

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The building in the "Macy's notch" at the corner of 34th and Broadway in 1911.

Again, nobody is hatless.

We have some old Christmas tree ornaments from the early 20th century - and that is how Santa looks. As a kid, I was always interested in his hood and robe and the fact that he was not particularly fat!

That building with the Presto sign is one of New York's great architectural "holdout" buildings. Macy's couldn't acquire that one corner when it built its current store, so there's a notch in the building.

http://www.nytimes.com/1993/11/21/realestate/streetscapes-the-macy-s-not...

This picture appears to show the original corner building, which was torn down not long after the store opened in 1902, and replaced with a five-story building that still stands.

Amazing how the look of Santas has evolved. This guy looks more like Sandalf The Red than a 21st Century Santa.

The Presto billboard is based on the style of Gelett Burgess' "The Goops and How Not to Be Them," a bestselling book of the time that was still in print in the 1950s.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goops

Burgess' style may have had an influence on the later UPA animation style. I think the Presto billboard is very well designed.

Everybody in this photo is lean & mean: Santa, the men looking on and the woman with the dead minks hanging around her neck.

Different world back then when u had to chase critters to eat and then wear their pelts around your neck as prizes.

Santa looks like a duded-up Jawa from Tatooine.

Santa's first job: Empty the collection bucket and head to Delmonico's for a steak!

The illustrations on that Presto billboard look amazingly like a style more popular in the 1950-60s.

[That's what I thought too. The advertising for Presto was nothing if not progressive. The first teaser ads don't even say what the product is. Then they go from cryptic to merely puzzling, featuring a stick-figure family with a cat named Waffles. Eventually we learn that Presto is "quick-flour." Ads below are from 1902. - Dave]

Interesting to see a picture of an American Santa Claus prior to the change in appearance brought on by the Coke Advertisements in the 1930's. This is a much more European looking Santa Claus.

At the far right is the old New York Herald Building (1893) by McKim, Mead & White, which stood on the trapezoidal block bounded by 35th and 36th streets, Broadway and Sixth Avenue. This means that Santa is standing on the southwest corner of 34th Street and Broadway, across from Macy's.

It looks like Merlin is trying to make Santa reappear.

It's most interesting to see how this Santa has a much more traditional costume than those we see today.