Historic OTIS Traction Elevator - Former Arnold Constable Department Store - New Rochelle, NY

Happy 4th of July! What a better way to celebrate than with a true American experience? Let me explain...

Back in the 1950's, Downtown New Rochelle was loaded with tons of great mini-stores, all unique in their own way. Bloomingdales, which was 6 stories (OTIS in case you are wondering) and Arnold Constable were the "anchor" stores of Downtown New Rochelle. My grandmother, when she was a young girl worked in the Arnold Constable store, which is this very building. One elevator was dedicated for passengers, and one was dedicated for freight, similar to Tri-County Flea Market. Later on, a man named Stanley Ruskin became the mayor of New Rochelle. He, along with major companies wanted to "modernize" New Rochelle, and bring in a mall called New Rochelle Mall. Due to that mall, all of the mini-stores, Bloomingdales and Arnold Constable closed to due the lack of business. Then, in the late 1990's, the mall (which had a Macy*s) failed and became New Roc City. Since then, the Arnold Constable building underwent major renovations and got turned into a medical office building, along with a few offices for Monroe College. The elevators were also affected by the changes. The historic 1940's OTIS elevators were re-done by a company called "Westchester Elevator Co.", and one of them was completely shut down. My grandmother, as of today is still alive, and has vibrant memories of what New Rochelle once was. If you ever were in New Rochelle, just remember it was a completely different place in the 1960's.

If you would like to learn more, please leave questions in the comments or PM me. To learn more about my historic high school, please check out future videos of that, as you will learn how it was built in 1925 with a dead-man traction elevator, almost completely burned down in 1968, re-built in 1968 with a Burlington/Dover passenger and freight, then had further renovations and modernized the elevators in 1994 by Midland, then added two Schindler 330A's in 2005 when the Musics/Arts building was built.

Thanks for watching, and more importantly thanks for reading. Have a safe and happy 4th of July! :)

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Arnold
• Constable
• Elevator

[Hopfnerpop]

and I just rembered that I had to manually open and close a collapsable sliding cage-like door at each stop!

[Hopfnerpop]

In the 1960s, while attending high school in New Rochelle, I had a Saturdy job driving the customer elevator at Arnold Constable's, possibly the one shown here (it looks familiar on the inside). Only then, the controls were on the left when you entered the elevator, and there were no buttons, just a manual control - you pushed in one direction to descend, pulled in the other to ascend, sort of like a dial on the clock (don't know the term!)...now that was old! Still, nice memories!

[elevatortimes]

So this store is from the 1950s? So Im guessing the building is now an office building. We have an old mall in El Paso from the 1960s, which is now the YISD building. I actually suck inside and no one noticed. It was full with Ysleta school teachers. The main entrance had a receptionist. I went in through the back. The elevators in the old mall were westinghouse, but got modernized by ThyssenKrupp.

[Konekss370]

those are gal

[jimster586]

I'm guessing that the buttons are a form of GAL jet plus, but that's only a guess...

[alpaljl]

I've seen those fixtures at The Del Morano office building. Loved the video description.

[FGelevators]

those fixtures look like montgomery G&P

[ih8thyssenkrupp]

i'd say that right car is dead man's and you'd probably need a drop key to get in.

[guineaphinea]

Oh wow, what great history.