Three years after it closed its beloved toy store on Fifth Avenue, FAO Schwarz is making a return to New York City.
A new FAO opened in Manhattan’s Rockefeller Center on Nov. 16, about ten blocks from its former home near Central Park.
For more than 150 years, FAO Schwarz was known in New York City for its classy and sometimes extravagantly expensive toys. Financial problems at the parent company and rising rents closed that store in 2015, but FAO is now pulling back from the worst financial precipice since it was founded in 1862.
In a global marketing push, pop-up FAO shops are also opening for the holidays in England, Spain, and Australia. A March rollout is planned for a permanent store at a mall in Beijing in addition to smaller retail locations in airports and elsewhere across the United States and Canada.
FAO Schwarz has gone through multiple corporate takeovers in recent years as retailers struggled to adapt to online sales. It was purchased in 2002 by Right Start Inc., which filed for bankruptcy twice. Toys “R” Us was the next owner. It sold the FAO name to the California-based ThreeSixty Brands in 2016 before recently declaring bankruptcy itself.