Actually, ever since the color negative that choice was there, use the colorneg in the enlarger with graded bw paper, even pop a colorfilter in between if desired. In fact, one could argue that this would have been the "correct" way of capture for purposes of archivability in similar fashion that we should all be using raw capture today.
There's a problem with that idea: the use of colour neg as dual purpose was something few pros that I knew ever did. We were too interested in making colour transparencies and/or black and white prints. I think surprisingly few commercial photographers used colour negative material at all. Almost all magazine work, stuff intended for publication and not a sideboard or mantlepiece, meant tranny or b/w film. This is not to knock the purveyors of wedding and baby colour snaps - some made big bucks - but just to illustrate that pro photography was most definitely split into two quite different worlds: the high street; the commercial operators.
I did producer 40"x 60" colour prints (printing farmed out) for clothing manufacturers' fashion shows around the world, but that produced three big problems: I shot on tranny so the client could see his product in its best colours and with least grain, and I prayed he didn't insist on projecting it; then the printers were supposed to make large internegs and prints from those, creating new opporunities for cock-ups; the third problem being that as whenever a process has to be farmed out, you end up losing ultimate control. And colour printing is an art: I know; I used to do a lot of it when I was an employee. The great difficulty one faced when farming stuff out was this: every printing lab has a built-in cost factor which dictates how much the printer will charge. If you insist on more than the number of filtration changes he has guessed will produce a "commercially acceptable" print when he drew up his print price list, you either overrun your own budget or he throws your work back in your face.
As for longevity: I think colour neg never enjoyed a good reputation for that! All film had its problems: Kodachrome was reputed to be the most stable both before and after pocessing, with the colours lasting much longer than any others if you stored the film properly and didn't expose it to a light box too often. Apparently, Ektachrome worked the other way: it didn't last as long, but it did survive light boxes better. However, all film needed great care before you even used it, and certainly after you processed it if you wanted it to last.
Of course, I'm writing about a world that has changed beyond belief since my time in the industry. I really don't know which films have survived digital - I still have a freezer drawer full of stuff that I shall never use... and I know the Kodachromes I have can't be processed...
That said, I still have original film negatives and trannies that seem to have survived well enough over the decades.