Bigelows' Department Store Building as Renovated. September 2002
Bigelows' Department Store Building as Renovated. September 2002
Description of Bigelow's Department Store and Operations
The main store was located on the northeast corner of Third Street and Washington Street. By 1960, it consisted of a six-story main building with mezzanine and basement, a four-story annex, and a two-story wooden annex. It was divided up as follows:
Basement - shoe repair, bargain women's clothing, glasswear and
small appliances
1st Floor main building - mens' clothing, cosmetics, notions,
purses, womens' leather goods
1st Floor main annex - notions, dry goods
1st Floor short annex - boys' clothing
Mezzanine main building - gift-wrapping, cashiers' cage
Mezzanine main annex - public lounge and restrooms,
2nd Floor main building - women's clothing, wedding dresses,
women's and children's shoes
2nd Floor main annex - millinery
2nd Floor short annex - office space, window decoration/advertising
shops
3rd Floor main building - foundation garments, girls' clothing
3rd Floor main annex - infants' clothing
4th Floor main building - linens, books, beauty shop
4th Floor main annex -- storage
5th Floor main building - furniture, home decoration
6th Floor main building - toys, main offices and accounting,
employees' lounge and restrooms
The holding corporation for the physical assets was the William B. Realty Company, a subsidiary of the Abrahamson-Bigelow Company. Beside the main building and annexes, it also owned three other separate buildings at various times after 1959. Just up the hill on Washington Street behind the main building was a small shop called the Yodeler, opened in 1962, which sold ski wear in season and youthful clothing in the summer. It was on top of the warehouse that contained storage and the shipping department. These were separated from the main store by an alleyway, as was the Hotel Jamestown building that was directly east of Bigelow's at 110 West Third Street.
Bigelow's had also purchased the old two-story Jamestown Sun newspaper building after it folded in 1960, located on the northwest corner of Fourth Street and Washington Street. This building was used for sales and preparation of floor coverings and large appliances.
A small single-story building located approximately two blocks
west on Third Street near the Chanticleer Diner was used for electronics
and appliances for a short time from 1959-1961, but this was eventually
sold when the Sun Building was purchased and the appliances split between
the basement (small, such as mixers, blenders, and toasters) and Fourth
Street (major, such as washers, dryers and refrigerators) buildings.
The Fourth Street building also housed a garage on its ground
floor for Bigelow's small fleet of delivery trucks. Bigelow's maintained
several vehicles for use as delivery vehicles and service: in 1965 they
owned three GMC ½ ton panel delivery trucks, a GMC ¾ ton
long body panel delivery truck for use in delivering rugs and linoleum,
a 1965 Mercury Comet station wagon for general use, and a 1962 Chevrolet
Corvair compact car for home decorators, plus a 1962 Jeep CJ-5 for general
purpose use and as a snowplow for the parking lots. .
There were also two parking lots located on the northwest and southwest corners of Fourth Street and Lafayette Street, one block west of the appliance shop. One small lot on the southwest side of the street held 40 monthly rental slots (it had been the original lot in the 1930s to 1950s) and a new, large lot on the northwest corner opened in 1960; it held over 100 slots for store customer. In 1964, parking cost 35 cents or the purchase of $2 in merchandise at any of the store's departments.
Bigelow's was unique among Jamestown businesses as it had a pneumatic cash tube system installed which fed all sales slips and money into a central cash cage on the mezzinane. Here cashiers would sort out cash and charge sales, file slips, and send change back to the sales counters. This system had been installed when the store was built in 1906, and it remained operational well into the 1970s. Only Noah's Ark, a hardware store in Brooklyn Square, used anything of similar antiquity: a cash basket system carried overhead by pulleys. Charge cards were originally metal '"charge plates" about 1" x 3" and were used prior to sending the slips up to the cash cage, but after 1968 they changed over to plastic.
Bigelow's, like any other higher quality store of its type, used unique boxes and bags for its packaging of goods sold. Up until the 1960s the bags were off white with brown printing and showed a script "Bigelow's" and a drawing of the original building. The boxes were white with brown print and all were tied up with brown and white "twist" string. Later, the colors were changed to green and white. The store motto, "The Store That Quality Built," appeared on many of them.
At its height around 1960 Bigelow's work forces numbered around 375 employees on its payroll,all of whom had to use a punchclock system located in the back of the First Floor Main Annex. Most were women working to supplement family income as their children moved out. Most were part-timers, as Bigelows' did not offer a retirement program. Employees were entitled to discounts of up to 20% on store goods; family members received discounts of up to 33%. Only selected employees received medical benefits through Blue Cross/Blue Shield. Most of the employees only earned minimum wage, but as most of the women were happy to have work to supplement the family income, and for most of the time the cost of living in Jamestown was low, all were reasonably happy.
For many years, Bigelow's held both a company picnic for its employees and their families at Midway Park, 13 miles north on Chautauqua Lake, and also a Christmas breakfast party at the Hotel Jamestown, complete with Santa Claus. But as things got tighter, first the Christmas breakfast went and later the summer picnic. Up until 1957, the employees were carried to the picnic on the old steamer "City of Jamestown," the last surviving boat of its type on Chautauqua Lake.
In 1962, Bigelows' suffered its only physical disaster when it was assumed that a cigarette was left smoldering in the storage area for children's shoes at the back of the second floor annex. This caused a fire to break out on a Saturday night, but the store had installed a sprinkler system and it activated when it sensed the fire. Unfortunately, the one on the second floor also triggered the one on the third and fourth floors of the annex in their storage areas to go off, and by the time the fire department arrived and shut off the system, a good deal of damage was done to goods stored in those areas. The Bigelow family, led by Frank Bigelow, Bob Buchan, George Gokey, and John Sewell, arrived along with children and cousins to clean out the mess caused by the resulting water damage. Overall, damage was slight, and the store was back to normal very quickly.
Bigelow's had three elevators for customer service: two large ones in the back of the first floor area and one near the side entrance at the front of the store. Two were manual elevators without automatic leveling, and one was newer and provided with that feature. This resulted in the fact that the elevators required operators for most of the store's life. At the time, all of the elevator operators were African-American women (as they called themselves in the 1950s and 1960s, colored folks) due to job sensitivities; it was not until the late 1960s that they were allowed to work as clerks.
This was a job calling for some skill, for at least one woman, Mary Kistler, a teacher at Southwestern High School, caught her heel in a misaligned elevator floor in 1965 and broke her hip in the resulting fall. (She later wound up as Stephen Sewell's 12th Grade English teacher, but bore no grudges!)
In another incident, in 1966 then New York State Senator Robert F. Kennedy came to visit Jamestown and talk to local business leaders. He was met by most of the Bigelow family in town, and was ushered into an elevator with Frank Bigelow, John Sewell, two Secret Service agents, and Stephen Sewell, who was the elevator operator for this ride. Halfway up to the Sixth Floor --where the local dignitaries were waiting in the Employees' Lounge -- John reached into his coat for an autograph book for Senator Kennedy to sign for his son Stuart. As it was a sudden move, the two Secret Servicemen -- assigned after the assassination of John Kennedy to Kennedy family members -- jumped him and slammed him into the back wall of the elevator. Stephen, startled, proceeded to jam the elevator -- nicknamed "Leaping Lena" by the regular operators for its propensity to do just that -- between floors. It took a few minutes to determine John was not an assassin and Stephen to get the elevator unstuck. At least Senator Kennedy thought it was funny! (This was the same elevator Mrs. Kistler had fallen victim to. Later on, in the mid 1970s, all of the elevators were replaced with self-service models.)
Up until the early 1960s, Jamestown was a city which only had one escalator in town, located in the Erie Train Station at the corner of Second Street and Washington. But in 1962-63, floor space was cleared to install “up” escalators from the 1st floor to the 2nd, 2nd to 3rd, and 3rd to 4th floors in the main annex. These were only switched manually to “down” escalators 10 minutes before closing every day.
Bigelow's in the 1960s was open 9 AM to 6 PM daily Monday-Thursday and Saturday, and 9 AM-9 PM on Fridays. During the last week prior to Christmas, this went to 9 AM to 9 PM daily except Saturday.
"According to most family records that I can find, Reuben W. Bigelow and Mr. Abrahamson formed a partnership in 1893 to create the Abrahamson-Bigelow Company, which was the backing of a department store in Jamestown, New York. Reuben’s brother Franklin joined him after the turn of the century, and by 1910 Mr. Abrahamson had either died or been bought out by the brothers."
back to Bigelow Department Store page 1.
Thanks to Steve Sewell AMPSOne@aol.com from Aberdeen,
Maryland for this info.
"My brothers remembered some more details and I found a history of
Mr.
Abrahamson and Reuben Bigelow in a history of Swedish immigrants to
Jamestown, NY (Abrahamson was Swedish, whereas we know Reuben and Franklin
were not!)" Steve, Stu, and
Stan Sewell
< rodbigelow@netzero.net
> 
