April's Musings

October 19, 2006
"New beginnings with Old Friends,
New York City Columbus Avenue"


Hello New York!

I was jetting to New York yesterday (oh that Jet Blue!) to open our new store and then yellow cabbing it to the Upper West Side. It was one of my happiest days in a long time. It was early morning when I arrived (about 8:30) but action at the Columbus Bakery was swift.

On grotty Columbus Avenue which is not really known for its beauty, you feel as if inside a Paris café. Big bowls of coffee, fresh croissants, American oatmeal and fresh fruits—oh what a way to start the day!

It felt a little like St. Germaine in Paris and a little like Third Avenue in Los Angeles. But the people were all Westside! Relaxed, and sophisticated, neighborly, and artistic, really very much its own community. Its own far from the madding crowd, yet still in Manhattan, still part of the New York rhythm. There were fathers and sons, young women in threes, old friends meeting for coffee, the employed and the self employed, newspaper readers—were those copy editors correcting papers, or perhaps professors? Opera singers or graphic artists?

With my bag at my side and notebook on the table I enjoyed observing my fellow Westsiders—my customers.

For 25 years we have done retail on Columbus Avenue and 83rd street. We opened on the Westside in 1981. At that time we had the naive plans of Montrealers—of being on Madison Avenue. A pretty cursory investigation led us to our budget destination—the Upper West Side—in those days exciting retail had pretty much stopped at 72nd street. We needed to be higher than that! We became one of the trail blazers for the Upper West Side and are we ever glad that we did!

Our initial shop on the Westside was called Handblock and we had two Indian partners, Pami and Kamal Singh, who we worked with in New Delhi.

Handblock represented the block printing process that many of our first table cloths had so we named the shop Handblock. I remember hauling a heavy sewing machine from Amsterdam Avenue to 487 Columbus to make our changing room curtains. Kamal probably remembers too—I think she put her back out carrying the ironing board!

We opened that store (saving our hotel dollars and sleeping in the store) with a lot of confidence and hope. Our first USA presence! As Canadians it was a big deal for us. For many years the basement of the store served as our wholesale receiving and shipping headquarters for the company with the sidewalk trap door so we could heave the bales down and the little packages up.

It took a few years for enough New Yorkers to find us and to make us a part of their neighborhood. The brownstones on the side streets were quickly being refurbished, a cared for look was returning to the neighborhood.

In the late 1980s we bought out our Indian partners and named the store April Cornell. We have been participating in the lives of our customers and their neighborhood ever since.

We are the jackets and dresses that hang in their closets, we are princess outfits at their children’s parties, we decorate their bedrooms and we travel in picnic baskets to Central Park, we give them nighties to sleep in and gifts for their friends. In so may ways we have been allowed to enter the lives of our Westside customers. Yesterday it was so good to be back! When I finished my bowl of yummy coffee at Columbus Bakery I strolled over to my store and opened the door to new beginnings—and old friends.

Our customers joined us all day long, enjoying the new look of the store (so much like the original feel, we all agreed) new hardwood floors, antique British Colonial furniture from India, beautiful silk sarees, crisp cotton prints by the yard, charming little girl outfits, fabulous Jan Michaels jewelry, piles of soft voile quilts, colorful happiness producing tablecloths—and at 6pm, a sparkle of champagne to toast our customers and my fine team who worked so hard to put this store together. Thank you Westsiders for welcoming us back to one of New York's most artistic neighborhoods and for allowing me to be a part of your community for the past 25 years. It feels like home.

April Cornell is located at 487 Columbus Avenue On the Upper West Side in New York City. The Cross Street is 83rd. Sorry our phone will be operational only next week!

We are also at 87 Church Street in Burlington, Vermont And in the Shops at Liberty Place in Philadelphia.