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Newark life. As noted in John T. Cunningham’s book Newark, the shops
store until 1923, when they sold it for seventeen million dollars to Sebastian
of the 1860s and ’70s were becoming big businesses. L.S. Plaut’s depart-
Kresge. Hahne’s, the oldest of Newark’s “Big 3” department stores, began
ment store, also known as “The Bee Hive,” was founded beside the Morris
as a birdcage shop in 1858 and expanded to general merchandise in the
Canal in 1870 by L. Simon Plaut; when he died in 1886, the business
1870s. By the time it opened its new downtown building in 1901, it catered
passed into the hands of his brothers, Louis and Moses. They operated the
to many of the wealthiest families in Newark, who arrived at the store in
A boxing match at the Progress Club, November 1917.