These days, I spend a lot of time in the recently restored Hahne & Company building in downtown Newark, New Jersey. Home to Express Newark, the center for socially engaged art and design that I currently direct, it was abandoned for nearly half a century before being renovated into a hub for everyday Newarkers to meet up, shop, or get their picture taken at our Shine Portrait Studio. Founded in 1858 as the city’s first department store, the building is remembered by many African American residents—like my grandmother, who migrated here from North Carolina—as a site of racial discrimination akin to, in many instances, what they long experienced down South. “We didn’t shop at Hahne,” my grandmother often said. Referring to its competitor around the corner, she’d add: “We only went to Bamberger’s.”
I’ve often wondered if the store’s
