Content area
Full Text
Louis Bamberger: Department Store Innovator and Philanthropist . By Linda B. Forgosh . Waltham, Mass. : Brandeis University Press , 2016. xv + 258 pp. Illustrations, notes, index. Cloth, $29.95. ISBN: 978-1-61168-981-5 .
Book Reviews
Louis Bamberger was born in 1855 in Baltimore, Maryland, into a family of dry goods merchants. His mother's family owned Hutzler's, a prominent department store there. By the end of the Civil War, both the Bamberger and Hutzler families had become successful merchants and part of the city's prosperous German Jewish community. Over time, Louis joined other German Jews in the pantheon of prominent department store magnates, such as the owners of Macy's, Bloomingdale's, Filene's, Kaufmann's, and Lazarus.
Author Linda Forgosh--executive director of the Jewish Historical Society of New Jersey--examines store ads, the company newsletter, Bamberger family papers, and personal reminiscences to construct a biography of the private Louis Bamberger and a history of L. Bamberger & Co. (Bamberger's), the store he cofounded in 1892 in Newark, New Jersey, with Felix Fuld, husband of his sister Caroline (Carrie), and Louis Frank (who died in 1910). Forgosh refers to Louis as "a figure of considerable importance not only to Newark and New Jersey but also a man who helped create modern America" (p. 1). During his thirty-six years in Newark, the city became the fourth-largest manufacturing center and Bamberger's the sixth-largest department store in the nation. Bamberger and other department store owners also helped to create a democratized consumption-driven nation.
The book is divided into two main parts: (1) Bamberger's Baltimore roots and the development of his business and (2) his extensive philanthropy in Newark and beyond. This review will focus on the former. Bamberger left school at age fourteen to work in the Hutzler business. After three years, he and his brother Julius joined...