Petticoat Lane moving on up King Street, to space long vacant

January 15, 2009
by Christine Yeres

In November 2006, the New Castle Town Board put the kibosh on Chase Bank’s fancy plans to make 66 King Street, the former home of Chappaqua Stationary and Giona’s, into a branch bank when they passed a local law banning new banks in first floor space.  See our article of May 23, 2008, “Chasing a first-floor use that’s out of favor, bank returns with fancy plans.”

For the next two and a half years the landlord, Ellie Nash, and Chase tried to persuade the town board to lift the ban. After the financial meltdown of 2008, with 66 King Street still empty and more shops in downtown Chappaqua closing, the town board expressed misgivings about its decision, yet declined to change it. [    ] 

On December 10, 2009 Phyllis and Matt Jacobson, a husband-and-wife team, purchased the place with plans to make it the new home of Phyllis’ Petticoat Lane, currently located at the end of King Street across from Chappaqua Village Market.
 Besides his keen interest in Petticoat Lane, Matt is also an investor in securities, real estate, hedge funds, commodities and organic farming.  Phyllis will move Petticoat Lane’s fancy undergarments, bags, belts, sleepwear and jewelry into both spaces after a complete renovation to make them one shop. Hot pink cardboard signs in the center of both windows announce that the new shop will open in this spring. 


Petticoat Lane, a Chappaqua institution since the 1980’s


In the late 1980’s Phyllis Jacobson launched Petticoat Lane in a small space behind the hardware store on South Greeley Avenue, her husband Matt explained, “making handbags and belts and fringed leather things for hippies; she made them herself.” She moved to One King Street, the last shop on the Lower King Street extension nearest the railroad tracks, around 1990, and then took over the shop next to her and then the one next to that. 

The chance to buy 66 King Street came at the perfect time, since the Jacobson’s’ lease on Lower King ends in March, explained Matt Jacobson, who works in both commercial and residential real estate. “We’d always been looking for a suitable building for Petticoat Lane, and this one finally came up,” said Matt Jacobson. “It sat vacant for a long time not because we didn’t want to buy it, but because the owner had a good lease [with Chase bank] and was hoping to make [that]work.” [Chase paid rent to landlord Ellie Nash for most of the time the space remained empty.] “Once she realized it wasn’t going through, she was willing to sell it.” 

He has mixed feelings about the circumstances that put the building into the couple’s hands. “On the one hand, you don’t want chain stores and real estate offices and banks on every corner,” he commented, “and on the other hand, you don’t want apparatchiks telling you what you can do because entrepreneurs are taking all the risks.  We have a lot of capital at risk, then someone pops up and says I don’t like this, I don’t like that.”


A building with a past, as town hall, dance hall, telephone exchange and jail

During their makeover of 66 King Street, the Jacobsons have learned from another neighbor near their new digs, the New Castle Historical Society, that their 66 King Street space was once the Hyatt Auditorium, a three-story combination town hall, jail and auditorium. Town offices were situated on the ground floor, and on its second floor, dances, lectures and silent movie showings took place.  Its third floor housed the telephone exchange.  A small structure at the back of the shop may even have been a one-room jail. 

For unknown reasons, the top two floors were removed sometime in the 1920’s and 30’s.  New Castle Town Historian Gray Williams guessed that the Hyatt Auditorium suffered a loss of purpose. Between 1926 and 1929, a new school was built in town, Robert E. Bell, with an auditorium that served as a community auditorium.  Two theaters appeared nearby, the Rome in Pleasantville to the south, and another in Mt. Kisco, to the north.  And catty-corner to the Hyatt Auditorium, the town was building what is now Sotheby’s brick and masonry building, replacing a grain and feed store.  The town offices moved to the ground floor of that new building, and the telephone exchange moved to its second floor.

”We’re having a lot of fun fixing the place up,” said Matt Jacobson.  “In the renovation we’ve discovered a beautiful old skylight at the back of shop, and Phyllis is going to make a lounge in the space under it. The façade is going to be one beautiful whole front. It’s a nice spot and we’ve got great neighbors in that part of the street.  Watch and see.  It’ll be great.”

Petticoat Lane today, on Lower King Street

66 King Street, Petticoat Lane’s future location

The Hyatt Auditorium sometime before it was shortened from three to one story in the 1920’s or 30’s. The staircase side of the building is now attached to Family Britches. The short little block building to the right of the Hyatt facade is now the open space on the corner opposite Starbucks, on the south side of King Street.

The current Sotheby’s building in 1930, dressed to celebrate its own opening as town hall and, at the same time, the opening of the new bridge.

The two photos above are reprinted from “Images of America, New Castle, Chappaqua and Millwood,” by The Chappaqua History Committee and Gray Williams, Foreword by Pres. Bill Clinton.

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Collected articles and letters: Whether to allow banks in first floor space