And so I was walking up to the CUNY Graduate Center for my first Proust class almost a year ago. I opened the door to the lobby. . . and stepped back forty years. back to the B.Altman department store in the 1970s.
When the landmark turn-of-the-twentieth century department store shuttered and was repurposed for CUNY two decades ago, it was entirely gutted and rebuilt–save for this ornately wood-carved vestibule, the boiserie now buffed to a high restored gleam.
I loved B. Altman–not only it’s evocatively intact interior and exteriors, but it’s high-quality, higher-end but not outrageously expensive men’s clothes.
Some weeks after that first Proustian immersion, I was alerted that the elevator was retained inside what is now the libary. I checked that out, and again experienced a heady recollection.
Hard by the 34th Street façade, the elevator cage now travels only between the first and second floors of the library. The rather lavish staircase from first to second floors has been retained as well.
A corner of the past still embedded amid a dramatically-transformed new surround. And an express trip back to a personal past and a lost era in retail.