After a brutal year, there is finally hope. In the spring of 2023, the flagship store of Century 21 will return and resurrect in all its glory its original home at 22 Cortlandt St. And this native New Yorker couldn’t be happier.
NYC got hit hard by COVID. It gets hit hard a lot. Most of my life growing up here was spent carefully navigating away from danger and towards the things that make this city great: restaurants, music, theater, and for most of my life, the best shopping on the planet. That requires a careful study of markets and trends, aisles and sales, and a penchant for finding hidden gems. It’s how I spent most Saturdays growing up. I would break my rule against subway transfers and take two trains to enter the mecca that was Century 21.
New York is famous for its rotating corners. One minute, there’s an Italian restaurant seated to capacity, the next it’s an eyeglass store. Stores often come and go, but the loss of Century 21 last year was truly devastating. After all, the store located across from the World Trade Center had miraculously survived 9/11 — so why couldn’t it withstand a pandemic?
The Century 21 department store in Lower Manhattan on Sept. 1, 2016. (Jefferson Siegel/New York Daily News)
But just like a true New Yorker, it got up, dusted itself off and reinvented itself. Next year, whether it be from the comforts of online shopping or using my Biggie MetroCard, I will return to the rebranded store and do what I love most.
The suburbs have their malls, but New Yorkers came in droves to wind their way through the multi-levels of one of the best shopping experiences I knew.
I started going to Century 21 as a teenager and spent most of my 20s making my way to Downtown Manhattan just to enter their glass doors. And I was not alone. Tons of people from all over the world came there for the discounted designs. Men from the financial district filled the first floor, snatching up classy ties and oxford shirts during their lunch breaks.
I spent a summer temping in the World Trade Center, and while the job was dull, I would spend my breaks amongst the hordes of shoppers grabbing cashmere sweaters and the like. In those moments of shopping bliss, nothing else mattered.
I would squander hours rummaging through each section of designer goods and schlepping those red and white vinyl shopping bags on The N train from Cortland St., switching at DeKalb. It was my special place to binge shop and people watch and I always left with my hands full. In those days, there were no dressing rooms, so you’d buy what you could carry and spend the next day waiting on line to return the ones that didn’t fit.
It was Century where I purchased my first suits for job interviews, my sexy undergarments, and endless Lancôme lipsticks. But it was the shoes, those strappy, chunky, stylish New York-only shoes, that made me feel part “Sex in the City” and part Goth.
When the Towers fell, I was instantly brought back to my time working there, and the thousands of people who had a chance to shop across the street. Did I know them? Could that have been me? The world as I knew was gone forever.
A few weeks later I went back to Cortland St. As we passed Chambers Street, I heard the woman across from me begin to wail. We were all still so sore, so vulnerable. And I got out and smelt that mildew/fire smell and saw the remnants of the store, scorched and wounded and disrobed, I cried too.
In our new world of hybrid and remote work, I am not sure the city will ever have that swarm of people filling the Financial District the way it once did. More people will buy their couture online than wait on line. But for those who want the true New York experience, I suggest next spring, when the frost clears and the Cherry Blossoms bloom, to take a ride to a fabulous store and leave with shopping bags (ok maybe recycled ones) filled with hope and possibility and the beauty you deserve.
In 1961, co-founders Al and Sonny Gindi named it Century 21 in anticipation of the upcoming World’s Fair. It was to represent “The World of Tomorrow,” and it did. Let’s hope it can again.
Rabinowitz is a freelance writer and ESL teacher.
Copyright © 2021, New York Daily News
Copyright © 2021, New York Daily News