Why New York's most beloved stores are dying

These stores serve a shrinking clientele: people financially healthy enough to splurge on a better-quality bathmat, but not so rich that they hire professionals to outfit their homes, and who use wholesale providers to do it.

Finally, these stores struggle because they don't serve the tourist trade. Since the financial crisis, Manhattan's retail market has been defined by overseas tourists who spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars per trip. But tourists want to buy clothes and jewelry and M&Ms, not pie pans.

The tourist trade, too, may be peaking. Fifth Avenue's tenants, from Topshop to H&M, seem increasingly desperate for customers, advertising rock-bottom "sale" prices year-round.

Retail upheaval is showing up in the numbers. In its fall report, the Real Estate Board of New York noted that "a slower retail sales environment," coupled with newly built space, "have started to affect ground-floor asking rents in Manhattan's most prominent retail corridors." Prices fell in 11 of 17 areas.