It is in the luxury shopping district of Fifth Avenue between 59th and 60th Streets, and opposite Manhattan's Grand Army Plaza.

The site is adjacent to the southeast corner of Central Park, opposite Manhattan's Grand Army Plaza.

[4] The store has a glass cube as its entranceway, measuring 32 ft (9.8 m) on each side, and with a suspended Apple logo inside.

The lenses are ocular reflective steel shells with glass tops that provide a view down into the store.

[7][9] The secondary entrances were added during the 2017–19 renovation after the store's popularity had led to severe congestion in the original design.

His renovation involved creating slightly elevated groves of trees on its north and south ends and installing fountains, benches, and a retail pavilion.

Shallow decorative pools were installed on either end of the cube, surrounded by tables, chairs, planters, and a few honey locust trees.

The renovation also added the two secondary entrances and replaced the original glass staircase with one made of stainless steel.

[1][9] The interior walls are clad in pale gray Italian Castagna stone with subtle stripes and rounded corners.

The skylights' lightwells are identical, round, and surrounded by a knitted fabric creating a tent-like effect to the ceiling.

Its exterior supports 43 cantilevering steps, designed with Bézier curves, evoking the shape of Apple products.

[13] Macklowe thought Jobs' proposed 40-foot (12 m) cube was too large for the site, violating zoning restrictions and obscuring and not harmonizing with the scale of the GM Building.

With thoughts that he wouldn't convince Jobs without visual proof, he had a mockup of the 40-ft. cube constructed in the late night on the plaza.

[13] The store was then developed in secret, and a prototype model was quietly built in a warehouse near the Apple Campus in Cupertino, California.

[2] It immediately drew lines of customers; in its first year the store averaged sales of $1 million per day.

Macklowe's real estate lawyer expressed regret that they had agreed to a "horrendously low" stop on Apple's percentage rent, as revenue far exceeded initial expectations.

[1] The space, formerly occupied by FAO Schwarz, was considered for an annex to the Apple Store around 2016, though the rent price was an issue.

The new plans nearly doubled the store's space, and substantially raised its ceiling by digging deeper into the ground.

[1][11] At the store's opening, the New York Times reported on the flagship, saying it "will burnish the company's reputation for clever design".

The newspaper, however, called many of its functions "costly indulgences", where almost half of its staff were there to provide free help on how to use Apple products, and crowds would use its internet-connected display computers and iPods to check email, browse webpages, or listen to music.

[2] When the store reopened in 2019, an author for Architectural Digest wrote: "For many, it’s now impossible to imagine the southeast corner of Central Park without it.

The American Institute of Architects' 2007 survey List of America's Favorite Architecture ranked Apple Fifth Avenue as the 53rd-best building in the United States.