What Can the ‘Bamberger Ideal Home’ Teach Us About Home Ownership?
- Darren Tobia
- Apr 10
- 3 min read
In the 1920s, the U.S. government wanted to promote homeownership and formed a campaign called Better Homes in America. It encouraged the formation of local committees across the nation who sponsored contests for the best model homes. Department store owners, such as Louis Bamberger, were more than willing to partake in this trend because they knew a model home could function as a showroom for their home goods.
This was the origin of the so-called Bamberger Ideal Home, built in Newark’s Weequahic neighborhood, an unusual landmark that celebrated its 100th anniversary last year.
The six-bedroom red-brick Colonial Revival at 729 Elizabeth Avenue was designed by Francis Nelson, a well-known Montclair architect. When the home, which included two servant quarters, opened to the public in Newark’s Weequahic neighborhood in 1924, 3,000 guests flooded through the doors each day. The initial draw was to see all the newfangled technology used inside, such as electricity, thermostats, fire alarms, even a garbage incinerator in the cellar.
One thing that made the Ideal Home era so interesting is that it tapped into American consumerism to promote a public benefit. What was so genius from a marketing standpoint was that Bamberger stocked the Ideal Home with seasonal merchandise from his namesake department store on Market Street.
While the home was open to the public, the rooms were refurbished with seasonal accoutrements. A series of full-page ads appeared in local newspapers, each one touting a different cutting-edge feature in the Ideal Home and household products displayed there.
“You will discover ideas in its draperies and in its furniture arrangements,” reads a 1924 ad in The Courier-News, a local newspaper in Bridgewater.
“It was expected that contents of the rooms and the labor-saving devices would tempt even the most resistant buyers to make changes to their homes,” writes Linda Forgash, in her biography Louis Bamberger. “After all, it was the ‘Ideal Home.’”
The home wasn’t the only model home Bamberger built – others included the so-called Nottingham House in Short Hills – but the one in Weequahic was the first. Although the Ideal Home bears Bamburger’s name, a common misconception is that he lived there – he never did, despite his flagship store located nearby in downtown Newark. The Ideal Home only remained open to the public for a year. In 1925, it was sold to businessman Harry A. Brawlow for $80,000.
The home is well preserved and it owes its current condition and park front views to the local preservationists from Newark Landmarks, who helped get the Weequahic Historic District listed on the National Register in 2003.
Essays have been written about the Ideal Home era and the irony of promoting home ownership to new Italian and Jewish immigrants and Black families arriving during the Great Migration. Stories appeared in publications at the time – one featuring an Italian woman – were laced with condescension. In reality, it was these groups, living in redlined districts, who found difficulty getting loans in the early 19th century.
Since the Fair Housing Act was passed in 1968, the barriers to homeownership have been eliminated. But owning a home is still out of reach economically for many Americans. This led one writer to conclude that “perhaps we don’t need another Better Homes of America for the modern housing landscape.”
But perhaps we need something similar. The nation has a similar shortage in housing that it did a century ago, and the only remedy being used is to weaken preservation laws and throw generationally long tax abatements to developers to build rentals that few can even afford.
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