In 1929, Newark's premier downtown
department store, L. Bamberger & Co., reached its peak as one of the greatest,
if not the greatest department store in America.
It was among the nation's four
top-ranking department stores in sales volume with over $38 million ($385
million in today's dollars), and unquestionably the most diversified among them.
Special In-Store Services
Bambergers offered a wealth of
special customer services that included: a consulting dressmaker ... cutting and
fitting service ... a bridal advisor ... clothing advisory service ... personal
shopping service ... interior decorating ... film rental library ... fishing and
hunting licenses ... parcel checking ... Post Office ... local time tables ...
theatre tickets ... telegrams ... circulating library ... Newark Public Library
Branch ... also fur and drapery storage and glove cleaning.
Order and Delivery Capability
Bambergers was a
virtual city unto itself with its internal post office, power generation
capabilities, toll-free telephone service from suburban cities, a corps of 24
specially-trained operators taking incoming calls, mostly telephone orders, who
would take orders as small as a spool of thread, with the store making overnight
delivery on one of the 192 motor trucks in the Bamberger delivery fleet.
The Bamberger deliver
trucks disposed of an average of 20,000 packages every day to customers in 542
towns.
If you were lucky
enough to own a car in 1929, you could get free parking at one downtown Newark
lot, or with a store-stamped voucher, or reduced rate parking as a Bamberger
customer at two other downtown lots.
Custom Work Done In-Store
Embroidered
handkerchiefs ... names woven ... engraving of stationery ... engraving of
jewelry and silver ... embroidering of linens ... making of dressmaking
accessories.
In-Store Instructions
Crocheting, tatting,
knitting ... dressing boudoir dolls ... lamp shade making and painting ...
needlepoint ... quilting ... rug making ... smocking ... trapunto work (raised
quilting).
In-Store Repairing
Cutlery ... hosiery
... umbrellas ... eyeglasses ... gloves ... jewelry ... corsets ... shoes ...
oriental rugs ... furs ... luggage ... restringing of tennis rackets.
The Store Itself
The entire square
footage of the store was 1,240,000 square feet. Each selling floor was
approximately 80,000 square feet.
The store towered 16
stories above street level and reached four stories below street level.
The above-ground floors included eight selling floors. The four basement
levels included two selling floors.
One of the
basement-level selling floors tunneled under Halsey Street into the building
which later became Ohrbachs.
1929 Birds-Eye View of Each Sales Floor
Early in 1929, while
still owned by Louis Bamberger, who oversaw its daily operations from his
eleventh floor office in the corner of the building marked by Washington and
Bank Streets, he provided an in-store Tour Guide which gave customers an
overhead view of every sales floor and the precise location of each department
located on that floor.
I recently acquired a
copy of the floor illustrations from that 1929 Bamberger Guide and offer them
here, perhaps for their first public exposure, nearly three quarters of a
century after their original issue to Downtown Newark shoppers.
Email this memory to a friend.
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