Even though eighty percent of Royal Green‘s business is to the trade, co-owner Rob Satran is adamant that everyone is welcome to its new appliance showroom at Broadway and Reade: “We built this primarily for architects, designers, contractors—that’s why we’re in the same building as the Department of Buildings!—but any retail customer can buy an appliance, too.”

The new showroom manages to pack a lot into its 3,000 square feet (slightly larger than the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf that preceded it, because Royal Green discovered extra space), while simultaneously managing not to leave you feeling like you’ve wandered into a warehouse. Eleven manufacturers are featured, each with a clock noting the time at its headquarters: Bosch/Thermador, Jenn Air, Dacor, Bertazzoni, Viking Range, Sub Zero/Wolf, GE Monogram, Liebherr, Fisher & Paykel, Blue Star, and Miele. Generally, the manufacturers get their own residential-style vignette, although occasionally a specific type of device—wine storage, laundry—is grouped by type.

If you’ve ever bought an appliance without handling it first, only to wish you’d shopped around more, you’ll know how helpful this set-up is. “The idea is to give you enough of a look and feel to understand the line,” says Satran. “It’s a taste of each brand. Maybe you like the stability of this Thermador oven, but you want more of a transitional handle. Most of the lines here have showrooms elsewhere in the city—at the A&D Building, the D&D Building, somewhere else—where you can see every configuration. We’ll even pay for a black car to take you there.” If it’s Fisher & Paykel you’re interested in, you can skip the trip uptown and explore the seven-foot-tall virtual-reality display.

Long based in White Plains, Royal Green was founded in 1955 as Leibert Brothers. In 1995, Stuart Royal and Jay Greenspan took over, changing the name to Leiberts Royal Green. Now the company is simply Royal Green, but the bread and butter of the business remains the same: refrigerators, ovens, cooktops, range hoods, dishwashers, and so on. If you’re not embarking on an upgrade/renovation, you might be once you scope out the built-in coffee machines, the microwave drawers that open with wave of the hand, or the Dacor refrigerator with a porcelain interior. (It’s $20,000 per column, but you can have the drawer fronts custom-painted, and it makes two kinds of ice.) Still to come: kitchen and bathroom faucet hardware from six brands.

“At the end of the day, this is a commodity,” says Satran. “The big question is, what happens once the appliance is delivered? We’re here because the architect community knows that after the delivery is when our work starts. We have seven people in White Plains whose job is after-the-sale service. We have our own warehouses, our own trucking department. And every delivery is white-glove. I don’t care what it is; I don’t care if it’s a Hotpoint stove. We’ll unpack it, set it into place, and take away the packing materials. And we don’t charge for delivery in the tri-state area.”

Royal Green Appliance Center is at 280 Broadway (at Reade); 888-534-4572; royalgreenny.com.

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