I.B. Cohen prepares for the holidays
As the owners of a 120-year-old business, Maryce and Lewis Cohen have sold clothing through a parade of holiday seasons from their New Rochelle storefront on Main Street.
Lou Gehrig bought his clothes there. So did Norman Rockwell.
As the holiday shopping season approaches, the clothes at I.B. Cohen remain of a quality, if not style, familiar to Gehrig and Rockwell: wool blazers that make a man stand a little straighter; gifts that make a woman say, “You shouldn”™t have.”
“Today we carry a more updated type of fashion along with the traditional,” Maryce Cohen said. “We”™re content with our niche, which is serving our customers, some of which have been customers for three or four generations of the same family.”
The Cohens have been at it long enough that the current sales climate must stack up against the go-go 1960s.
“It was insane,” Maryce Cohen said of retailing four decades ago. “People would come in and buy presents for everyone in their office. We”™d sell 20 Pendleton shirts at 70 bucks a pop. Then those shirts would have to be gift wrapped. We had two tables set up just for wrapping and packaging; two people did that exclusively.”
The biggest sellers at holiday time are shawls, jewelry, purses and sweaters ”“ anything that doesn”™t require a size.
I.B. Cohen was founded by Lewis”™s grandfather, an immigrant from Lithuania. The I.B. stands for his name: Israel Ben Cohen. The store has been open since 1887.
“My grandfather came here in1882 and became a peddler between New York City and Port Chester,” Lewis Cohen said. “A few years later he was walking down the street in New York and he met a girl who became my grandmother. She was also from Lithuania. When she came here, she came by boat, but you know how the trips were in those days. She originally was not supposed to stay, but she wouldn”™t get back on a boat after that first trip.”
Â
After Lewis”™s grandparents got married, they rented a place on Mamaroneck Avenue where Lewis”™s father, one of eight children, was born in 1899. The original I.B. Cohen location was in Mamaroneck.
Â
In 1900 the family moved to New Rochelle, where Division Street meets Main Street, and rented a store there.
“They stayed there until 1912, when the city demolished all those buildings to widen Division Street,” Lewis Cohen said. “It was just an alley at the time, and my grandfather built a three-story building in 1912 on Main Street. In 1940, the store moved to its current location, 525 Main Street, kicking off the move with a sale: $2 shirts and $1 ties.
It was a time when New Rochelle was the richest per capita city in the state and the third in the country, according to Lewis Cohen.
“New Rochelle was a very important business section, and the street reflected the wealth of the community,” Lewis Cohen said. At the time, “we used to have 18 men”™s clothing stores here.”
Now, I.B. Cohen is the only store that carries the upscale clothing that was once a New Rochelle hallmark.
Hickey-Freeman suits, which cost $67 in the late 1930s, now cost at least $1,300, Lewis Cohen said. The store still carries the brand along with newer fashions.
“We”™ve been in business for over 120 years, and we”™ve seen the ups and downs of economic changes that occur,” Maryce Cohen said. “We feel that New Rochelle is on the upswing and we”™re noticing many new faces downtown. We appreciate the many generations as well as the newcomers that come in our store.”