Halsey Street

Halsey Street is today one of Newark's best restaurant streets, where full-time Newarkers, Prudential employees, Rutgers-Newark and NJIT students, Newark Museum visitors, and NJPAC theater-goers mingle as they dine.

Amidst all that great food, I don't know how many people stop and wonder about Newark's history. Just in case you are one of those people, this web feature (my first in 12 years!) is for you!

Halsey Street was named for Newark's first mayor, William Halsey (born 1770, died 1837, served 1836-1837). Halsey had been president of the Newark Aqueduct Company. He had also tried to organize Newark's first police force.

The Green Chickpea is one of my favorite Newark restaurants. Something I love about it is how off-the-charts diverse the clientele is, from people wearing business suits who presumably work at Prudential, to RU-Newark students, Orthodox Jews, to people who look like they come off the street.

The Green Chickpea, like most restaurants on Halsey Street, is closed on weekends.

The Hahne's building was once one of Newark's Big Five department stores, along with Plaut's, Kresge's, S. Klein, and Bamberger's, plus bigger chains like Jay's, Orbach's, Burt's, F.W. Woolworth's, and McCrory. Hahne's itself was founded in 1858, making it the oldest of Newark's department stores. The Hahne's family itself, like all of Newark's elite in the 19th century, lived in Newark, on Lincoln Park.

The last of Newark's department stores was Woolworth's, which closed on October 31st, 1997.

The Hahne's building was built in 1901 and designed by Goldwin Starrett, of the firm Starrett & Van Vleck. Though the firm is obscure now, it was known for department stores, such as the New York City flagships of Sak's Fifth Avenue, Lord & Taylor, Bloomingdale's, Abraham & Straus, and Alexander's. They had other landmark department stores in other cities in the United States, plus the Kresge's in Newark (on Broad Street).

Hahne's closed in 1986 and was bought by Miles Berger in 1993, who also purchased the adjacent Griffith Building (part of which is shown in the photo). Berger had the building listed as an historic site in 1994 and replaced the windows, but he could not finalize redevelopment.

Finally, L+M Partners, working with the Hanini Group, acquired the building, qualified for $106 million in state and local tax incentives, got financing from the Prudential (which was building its own new 20 storey offices in the vicinity), Rutgers-Newark to commit to being a tenant, got Whole Foods to commit to being a tenant, and started redevelopment in 2015. Two years later, in 2017, Hahne's reopened for the first time in 30 years.

This location used to be just the eastern entrance to the faculty parking lot, but 2017-2019, Rutgers turned this into a five-storey dorm. The architect was Perkins Eastman, a prolific firm that has designed several other buildings in Newark recently, such as the Claremont Tower and Ironside Newark (the former Newark Warehouse Company Building).

Built with the help of $210 million in state tax incentives and designed by Kohn Pederson Fox and completed in 2015, this 20 storey, $444 million building houses 3,000 Prudential workers. The construction of the Prudential expansion coincided with a $150 million investment in the historic Hahne & Co. Building, the restoration of Military Park and the conversion of the former National State Bank building on Broad Street into a Hotel Indigo.

The tax incentives around Prudential expansion were controversial because most of the workers who went to the new Prudential tower on Broad Street were actually just relocated from the Gateway Center, so the net increase in Prudential's Newark employee count was only a few hundred. The owner of the Gateway Complex actually sued over the incentive, but their case was ultimately lost.

Designed by Cass Gilbert and constructed in 1924-1925, its purpose, like much else in downtown Newark, was offices for the Prudential (hence the name, "Gibraltar Building"), which had its other home-office buildings located a block away on Broad Street and then another building on Washington Street.

Prudential owned the Gibraltar Building until 1986, thereafter the building was part of the Hartz Mountain Industries portfolio. Eventually the Gibraltar Building became home to a variety of state agencies and courts. In 2021 the building was purchased by a partnership involving SHIFT, the Hanini Group, and CoInvestment Partners, which will invest $70 million in renewing the old building, despite the difficulties of the post-Covid environment.

The next great landmark on Halsey Street is the former Bamberger Department store, located on the block between Halsey Street, Bank Street, Washington Street, and Market Street.

Bamberger's Department Store was the biggest in New Jersey, and one of the biggest in the United States, but it had a humble beginning in 1892 as a little store known as "L. Bamberger and Co." selling the merchandise of a bankrupt entity called Hill & Craig.

Louis Bamberger and his partners were from the German-Jewish community of Baltimore. They came to Newark because they believed its rapid growth made it a good commercial bet. Bamberger's maternal family was already in the retail business, so he had experience in store management.

Like many other "dry goods" merchants like Marshall Field & Co. that later grew into giants, Bamberger's attracted customers by offering things we now take for granted, like no-haggle pricing, guaranteed returns, and wide assortments of merchandise. Bamberger's also grew rapidly because of skillful marketing, such as remote signs along railroads saying "New Jersey's Greatest Store, One of America's Finest Store," "a store for both masses and classes," and "a monument to all the people - "rich and poor." It also sponsored a Thanksgiving Day Parade (which Macy's later adopted for NY), in 1955 the Thanksgiving Parade was even done at night, with glow-in-the-dark floats. Bamberger's started the WOR radio station in 1922. In 1947, at Newark's zenith, the Bamberger's parade was viewed by an estimated 300,000, in 1950 the crowd was estimated at 500,000. In 1924 Bamberger's started a store-magazine known as "Charm."

Bamberger's made shopping there an experience: staff wore red carnations in their lapels and the store had elegant cafes, like the Alcove Cafe on the 8th floor. It also created a delivery service with its own trucks that delivered all over northern New Jersey.

In its effort to associate itself with refined living, Bamberger's was also a sporadic art museum. In 1952 it displayed Victorian objects. In 1966 Bamberger's had a "Gallery of the Masters" exhibition which featured art by El Greco, Goya, Velazquez ("Apostle of St. Peter"), John Singer Sargent ("The Ladies Acheson"), Rembrandt, Gilbert Stuart plus works by lesser-known European artists.

Does Amazon do the equivalent?

Louis Bamberger sold his department store in 1929 to Macy's, but stayed on as a manager. Macy's kept the Bamberger name on the Newark store and all its New Jersey stores until 1986. Louis Bamberger himself died in 1944.

Bamberger never married. He was the greatest philanthropist in Newark history, although, tragically , he gave most of his estate to the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, which is the ivory tower's ivory tower, where scholars do not have to teach. Instead of helping the people and community he made his money from (Newark certainly had deep problems even in the 1940s), he helped academics who could have been employed anywhere, and whose spending power would enrich Princeton, which was already a very rich town.

Newark, by contrast, barely had any higher learning opportunities in the 1930s-1940s. Princeton, like the rest of the Ivy League, achieved its status by robbing America's industrial cities and heartland. As Winston Churchill said "Cultured people are merely the glittering scum which floats upon the deep river of production."

Once Bamberger's was was open until 9:00 PM at night. It closed completely in 1992.

Today the old Bamberger's store just has public access in some ground-floor retail. The upper floors are server farms. The building is not abandoned, but isn't a contributor to Newark's urban life either.

What would Louis Bamberger have thought of Newark's fate?

Opening in 1915 in Newark's Golden Age, Proctor's Theater was immense, with 40' high lobby leading to a 2,800 seat ground floor theater and a 1,400 seat third & fourth floor theater. Proctor's and its peer theaters in Newark were actually "Magnitude and Bond." It celebrates the resiliency of Black women. It shows Gladys Barker Grauer and Breya Knight (attired as a knight) and quotes from Lucille Clifton and quotes from her 1993 poem "Won't you celebrate with me?"

The artist was was Womb of Violet collective. The title of the mural comes from Gwendolyn Brooks: "We are each other's business; we are each other's harvest; we are each other's magnitude and bond."

A block from the locally famous Hobby's Deli is a unique apartment buildings called Teachers Village.

Teachers Village isn't restricted to teachers, but it markets itself to teachers. Marketing to teacher is based on an acknowledgement that PreK-12 education gets over is Newark's largest "industry," with the Newark Public Schools and charters spending over $1.2 billion annually (of which the large majority is state and federal aid) and that a large percentage of people who can afford high-quality apartments in Newark are teachers.

Originally comprising dozens of different land parcels and spread out over 20 acres, Teachers Village is home to three charter schools (who pay rent for their space), a daycare, 203 residential units, and 65,000 square feet of retail. Five of the eight buildings were designed by Newark-native Richard Meier and are his Minimalist luxe aesthetic.

"Your neighbor is suffering; therefore devise some means to assist"

Founded in 1803, the Newark Female Charitable Society was designed to help poor people help themselves, by giving them material and skills to earn better livings. In its early generations, money was rarely given out, but sometimes food and clothing were supplied in emergencies. Girls and women were also taught domestic skills, like sewing, cleanliness, and cooking. Willing-workers were connected to employers. The founding women of the society had names that have been preserved in Newark streets, like Hannah Burnet Kinney and Rachel Bradford Boudinot.

After the Civil War, during Newark's period as an industrial colossus, the Female Aid Society grew. In 1878 it began a day nursery, in 1882 it began a fresh air fund, in 1886 it began to provide lunchtime meals, and in 1910 it began a Boys Amusement Room.

This building was constructed in 1886.