New York City has its share of landmarks — Empire State Building, Statue of Liberty — but during the Christmas season, tourists tend to flock to a few things: The tree at Rockefeller Center. The Radio City Music Hall Christmas show. And the decorated windows at the city’s most prestigious stores.

When it comes to the latter, “decorated” is an understatement. These windows are feats of whimsical imagination and engineering ingenuity. They look like a wildly creative movie still — except no CGI is required.

In one, a huge, happy bear sits in a mound of snow, becoming a mountain on which teeny people in skis use as a slope. In another, the landscape consists of slightly skewed versions of candy — canes, ribbon, lollipops — as one figure, wearing a huge hat, sits inside a high-heeled shoe as it seems to be caught mid-careen downhill, with a wild-haired woman standing atop the shoe tip, leaning forward as if she’s a figure head on a ship.

Who is at the top of the heap when it comes to devising these fiendishly clever set pieces? Spaeth Design.

Sandy Spaeth of Spaeth Design will give a peek into the company when she gives a free public talk titled “Big Shoes to Fill: Changing the Landscape of Retail” on Wednesday at Mitchell College.

Spaeth Design is a family company, founded in 1945 by spouses Walter and Dorothy Spaeth. Their son David is now the owner and CEO, and Sandy, who is married to David, is the president.

The business was more of a typical Christmas business before David, who was an aeronautical engineer, joined in and brought his engineering expertise to the company, which transitioned into what it is now. As Spaeth Design's website describes it, “Our specialty is building crowds and creating wonder. In today’s fast-paced world, it takes more and more to attract attention to your brand. Our team of designers, engineers and makers have you covered.”

The Christmas windows can take a year or upwards to plan and execute. The tasks include devising a story, drawing up storyboards, creating costumes and scenery, and much more.

The results are dazzling. The department store windows in the Big Apple get judged each winter, and, last year, two of the top three — Bloomingdale’s and Tiffany & Co.’s — were the work of Spaeth Design.

While the company is best-known for its windows in New York City (Spaeth Design is based in Queens), it has done work all over the world, from Hawaii to Hong Kong, and it has produced other eye-catching projects. They created a giant pasta machine to sit outside and show, in a dramatic way, where Italian market Eataly had opened a location in New York City. Spaeth met earlier this month with a “big movie studio” but couldn’t say more about the venture yet.

“We do museum work because the same talent in our company that applies to retail also transfers over to exhibits. So we did the 100th anniversary exhibit for the public library on 5th Avenue and 42nd Street. We also did the 50th anniversary exhibit for Lincoln Center,” she says.

More of what Sandy Spaeth had to say during a recent phone conversation ...

Better than the internet: “My company is what I call an entertainment company because, with so much online business — people going online to buy things, including myself — stores now realize they need to do something compelling to have people show up at the store. So what we do is we provide entertainment. We provide a reason for people to show up.”

Like a pint-sized Broadway show: “That’s how we got started as our business, doing animated holiday windows, because it draws the public to the store. … Basically, when we do the holiday windows (in New York City), it’s a gift to the city because often, if you look at most windows, they are there to sell merchandise, whether there’s an outfit or tennis shoes or whatever it is. But the holiday windows that we do don’t have any merchandise in there at all. … I call them mini-Broadway shows that the public attends every year. It’s become such a tradition.”

A roller coaster in a window? Wheeee! “We had a client, very talented client, that wanted us to put a roller coaster inside of the Macy’s windows. We said, ‘We cannot do that.’ Then we said, ‘That’s crazy, a roller coaster?’ Finally, he said, ‘No, please try it, try it.’ So we put our heads together and brainstormed, and we did it. We created a roller coaster that was inside.”

The roller coaster — with Santa, sleigh and reindeer onboard — was no slow poke: “That roller coaster whipped around so much that we figured out that something that was about four feet long — because everything is miniature — it zoomed around (so much) that, from the time we set up the window for the beginning of the season until the end of the season, it would have traveled from New York to Las Vegas.”

They had to keep track of potential trouble with the roller coaster: “It careened around so fast that we were afraid that, if it got off track, it would come crashing through the glass. So what we did was we put censors inside Santa’s sleigh, so if deviated from (where it should be), then it would send us a text message to our phone. … You have this roller coaster going around and around. The wheels get worn down, so we had a duplicate roller coaster ready to swap out in case things get worn down.” (That swap out proved not to be necessary.)

What her job at Spaeth Design involves: “My personal job is just to make sure everything goes smoothly. I’m the one that keeps things on track. … I equate my job to when our kids were younger and I would be a class mother on a class trip. The moment that bus opens, the kids are running all over the place. ‘Get back in line, get back in line!’ But over the years, we’ve just trained our managers to be so good that we’re much more relaxed about it. They troubleshoot beautifully.”

Spaeth began her career in publishing, as senior vice president of marketing for Parade Publications (Conde Nast) and as associate publisher/marketing for Good Housekeeping: “Even though I was in publishing, I wasn’t in publishing like the editor, writing the copy and stuff like that. I was more on the business side. I was in charge of advertising, promotion, public relations, special events. In many ways, that’s what we do here. I’m like a translator here, because I’ve been in the corporate world and I know how budgets are set and I know how it works. I’m the client liaison, I’m the one that will represent the client internally to our people here … and I will represent the company to the client.” 

If you go

Who: Sandy Spaeth

What: Talk on “Big Shoes to Fill: Changing the Landscape of Retail”

Where: The Red Barn, Mitchell College, 437 Pequot Ave., New London

Part of: The Leske Family Speakers Series

When: 7-8:30 p.m. Wednesday

Admission: Free

For more info: www.mitchell.edu/speakers-series