If you’ve shopped at a major department store, you owe a note of thanks to Louis Bamberger for making it happen. And if you live in Northern New Jersey, you owe him a lot more, as he was one of the most impressive anonymous philanthropists our country has ever known — and at least partially responsible for bringing Albert Einstein to America.
First, a note on your current location: As you find this cache, you stand across Linden Avenue from a very impressive Tudor mansion, which was formerly the Bamberger mansion (currently for sale mid-renovation).
Now a little business history for those who don’t know: Louis Bamberger bought a failing store called Hill & Craig on Newark’s Market Street in 1892, renamed it L. Bamberger & Co., and before long redefined the world of retail shopping. By 1912, his store, which now filled a full city block with 14 floors, was one of the highest-grossing stores in the world and employed 2,800 people. At its peak the store’s retail space occupied nine floors above ground (the 10th featured a massive elegant restaurant and banquet rooms) and 2 more floors below ground, pioneered sponsored content by launching its own promotional radio station (which became WOR), and boasted massive truck elevators to take the long lines of delivery trucks off of busy Washington Street down to basement loading docks. When he finally sold the business to competitor R.H. Macy & Co. in 1929, it was fortuitously just before the stock market crash.
Flush with cash, this successful businessman did what almost no one ever does: First, he gave $1 million to the 236 employees who had helped make him successful. Check that – he never called the people who worked for him “employees,” instead insisting on calling them “co-workers.” He also provided for their continuing education with an on-site library and free in-house Rutgers classes, provided health care for them at work, and left money each of them more money in his will.
Bamberger then devoted the rest of his life to quietly helping people (to be fair, an activity he already seemed to devote a fair amount of time to).
This is only a partial list: He alone or with partners funded the Newark Museum (even buying it a new $700,000 building in 1926 and donating works of art and science to its collection), the New Jersey Historical Society (donating a new building as well as his collection of the autographs of every signer of the Declaration of Independence), Newark’s Community Chest, the Newark YM-YWHA, Newark’s Beth Israel Hospital, and most Jewish Community Centers in New Jersey. He donated to numerous Jewish charities, including efforts to help Jews escape from Nazi-controlled areas of Europe. Always concerned with helping vets, Bamberger left his estate to be turned into the East Orange Veteran’s Hospital. He devoted most of WOR’s airtime to educational cultural programming as a gift for the people of Newark, and donated radios to all of the city’s schools so children could experience it.
Together with his widowed sister Caroline Bamberger Fuld, he donated $5 million (more than $50 million in today’s dollars) to create Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study, which would soon count Albert Einstein, and many other great European minds who had fled Hitler, among its faculty (and continued funding it with additional donations).
But the most amazing part is that much of these good deeds were done very quietly, with many of his donations not becoming public knowledge until after his death. He had repeatedly declined offers for prominent leadership roles with charitable organizations, instead offering to donate the salary to pay for another leader more willing to be a public face.
When Louis Bamberger died in 1944, Newark flew flags at half-staff and effectively shut down for three days in mourning. But to this day, per his wishes, there is no monument or memorial to his generosity — where he’s buried (or even if he was buried) is still a mystery.
That’s Louis. His nephew Edgar Bamberger (Louis had no kids of his own), who worked with him and was really the one responsible for WOR, lived full-time in the family mansion on Gregory Avenue, across the street from this cache. Sadly, I haven’t been able to learn much about his life, but I did find one interesting story:
Edgar Bamberger was a trustee of the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study and had the honor of being the representative sent to pick up the great Albert Einstein and his family when they first arrived in the United States after fleeing Europe in 1933.
To give you a sense of what different times those were here in the U.S., as Bamberger met Albert Einstein after the world’s most brilliant mind cleared quarantine, he handed him a letter from the Institute director that read, in part: “There is no doubt whatsoever that there are organized bands of irresponsible Nazis in this country. I have conferred with the local authorities…and the national government in Washington, and they have all given me the advice…that your safety in America depends on silence and refraining from attendance at public functions…. You and your wife will be thoroughly welcome at Princeton, but in the long run your safety will depend on your discretion.”
Edgar brought Einstein safely down to Princeton, where he would end up spending the rest of his life as a faculty member of the Institute until his death in 1955, when he was cremated — and, like Louis Bamberger, let his final resting place remain a lingering mystery.
Now for the cache: You're looking for a small, silver magnetic cache. You DO NOT have to stand in the road to get it -- please remain safely on the sidewalk. Don't park along busy Gregory Avenue -- instead, park on Linden Ave. This can be a quick P&G. Congrats to TheSurfcaster for the FTF!