Background
He was born on May 15, 1855 in Baltimore, Maryland, one of five children and the younger of two sons of Elkan and Theresa (Hutzler) Bamberger. Both parents were German Jews of Bavarian origin.
He was born on May 15, 1855 in Baltimore, Maryland, one of five children and the younger of two sons of Elkan and Theresa (Hutzler) Bamberger. Both parents were German Jews of Bavarian origin.
Louis attended Baltimore public schools until the age of fourteen, when he went to work as a clerk and errand boy in the dry goods store, Hutzler Brothers, owned by his maternal uncles.
He joined his father's business in 1871 and a few years later, when the elder Bamberger retired, Louis and his brother Julius purchased the firm. In 1887 Louis Bamberger moved to New York City to work as a buyer for a San Francisco wholesale house while looking for a chance to establish his own business. The opportunity came in December 1892, when he purchased Hill and Cragg, a bankrupt dry goods house in Newark, N. J. After selling the stock, he organized the firm of L. Bamberger and Company, taking as partners Louis Frank and Felix Fuld. When Frank died in 1910, the two remaining partners bought out his interest. Fuld, who married Bamberger's sister Carrie in 1913, was associated with the company for thirty-six years.
Opening in February 1893, L. Bamberger and Company grew into New Jersey's largest retail business and one of the nation's largest department stores. Under Bamberger's direction the store pioneered in modern retailing techniques. From the beginning it operated on a satisfaction-guaranteed policy, and it was among the first stores to provide such conveniences as a restaurant and customer parking. In 1922 Bamberger established one of the pioneer commercial radio stations - WOR - known as the "Bamberger Broadcasting Company. " Originally located on the top floor of the Newark store, it was soon shifted to Kearny, New Jersey, where its 5, 000-watt transmitter made it one of the largest and most popular stations in the country. The store also published Charm Magazine, beginning in 1924.
Always interested in the welfare of his employees, Bamberger provided a fully staffed educational department for their benefit, and when the first public financing of the company was instituted in 1927, employees were given the opportunity to purchase stock on a two-year installment plan. In 1929, after Felix Fuld's death, Bamberger and Carrie Fuld sold the department store to R. H. Macy and Company of New York for $25, 000, 000, and shortly afterward distributed $1, 000, 000 among nearly 240 employees with fifteen or more years of service.
Bamberger continued to serve as chairman of the board of directors until 1939. Bamberger's interest in philanthropy grew with the years. He made extensive donations of the conventional kind to a variety of civic, cultural, and humanitarian organizations in the Newark area. In response to the efforts of John Cotton Dana to establish an imaginative new museum in the city of Newark, Bamberger gave $650, 000 in 1923 and 1924 to construct a building for the Newark Museum, and he contributed liberally to its permanent collection.
He was also a friend and patron of Jewish organizations and gave generously to groups raising relief funds for Jews in Germany and Palestine. Outstanding among Bamberger's benefactions was his endowment of the Institute for Advanced Study. Through the philanthropist Abraham Flexner, Bamberger and his sister Mrs. Fuld became interested in the creation of a new type of educational institution in the United States, an institution dedicated primarily to advanced research. In 1930 they gave $5, 000, 000 to found the Institute for Advanced Study on the condition that Flexner would organize and direct it. The site chosen was the town of Princeton, in accordance with Bamberger's wish that it be in New Jersey. The first unit, a school of mathematics distinguished by the presence of Albert Einstein, opened in 1933; a school of historical studies was added later. Here established scholars, given temporary or long-standing appointments, were free to pursue creative research. Bamberger served as president of the board of trustees until 1934, when he became a life trustee, and at his death he left the institute the greater part of his fortune. In all, he and his sister gave the institute approximately $18, 000, 000.
A short, slight man, Bamberger possessed quiet and cultured tastes. An enthusiastic collector of art, antiquities, and Americana, he left collections to the Newark Museum and the New Jersey Historical Society. Unusually modest, he carefully avoided personal publicity. His philanthropy was governed by the same careful consideration that marked his business life.
Bamberger never married or had children.
