I wish I could say this particular coin was created for some noble anniversary of great importance to national heritage, but truth be told it was yet another money grab. Basically, a local coin club saw how the Mint had lost its mind in 1936 by pumping out two dozen comms, and they decided they wanted to get in on the action. They found a local anniversary that they could rally around, convinced a few Congress people (apparently that was easier back then than today), and before you know it this coin was made: It was the last classic commemorative minted until 1946, because by this time Congress was really weary of the program and decided they've had enough.
Other PCGS slab versions show the date and spell out New Rochelle. NGC and ANACS show the date and spell out Rochelle, but I did find one NGC slab with New Rochel. Just a curiosity I guess.
@KBBPLL From experience, Rattlers and OGH slabs have abbreviated names when possible and omit dates when it is not needed like in the example of a single year commemorative. Here is a photo of some rattlers with different versions of that (the commemoratives anyway). Just ignore the delicious Franklin half in the rattler. As you can see, Boone was minted in several years so that one gets a date, the rest don't. I've seen the same theme in OGH, where dateless slabs or abbreviated names are common for classic comms.
I wonder if their label database had a 10 character limit for that field/column, hence "New Rochel". Back in the good old days data storage was very limited.
Nice Rattlers @Sallent I have a couple of two Buffalo and two Peace in Rattlers that only have a date, grade, and cert number.
