Hahne & Co. Express Newark

Project Details

Project Description

Open windows on the second floor of the once-vacant Hahne & Co. building expose the inner workings of the bustling Newark Print Shop: the home to aspiring print-makers every Wednesday at the open Print Club. The lobby showcases diverse students, customers, thinkers, doers, and members of Newark’s citizenry in a constant state of ebb and flow, circulating around amphitheater stairs – to public forums, classes, and photoshoots. Digital editing labs, conference rooms, and workshops house 3D print collaborations, Express Newark design consortium branding reviews, and video production classes questioning the “why” and “how” of narrative development. Local residents wander the latest exhibits in the galleries and peer into welcoming hallway exhibits. Parents and their children join in on weekly Art Break sessions: origami 101 this week, jazz lecture the next. The three floors of Express Newark, totaling 50,000 sf of Hahne & Co.’s full 500,000 sf development, are bursting to life with multidisciplinary engagements, spirited debate, and artistic expression.

The adaptive reuse of a significant portion of the historic Hahne & Co. department store provides Rutgers University with a unique, mission-driven opportunity to strengthen its relationship with the community of Newark and the State of New Jersey. The development of this historic landmark as a center for the creation, exhibition, and conversation of Arts and Communications enhances the city’s “Arts Triangle”— the downtown area under development to reignite the vibrancy of Newark’s city core.

Partner in Charge, Merilee Meacock, AIA, PP, LEED AP notes, “Working with Rutgers and L+M Development Partners in articulating Express Newark as a thoughtful intersection between the University and community has continued to be defined by a cascade of inspiration & excitement. Express Newark embraces the arts as a catalyst for change and vibrant collaboration—it’s showcasing the arts as the heart of the community that animates this project as a critical advocate for the vital diversity and promising future of this neighborhood.”

Redeveloping the abandoned space as a distinctive, community-based educational program, KSS designed an art incubator, community media center, portrait studio, design consortium, and letterpress studio. Community partnerships are numerous, including charter schools, county and city colleges, boys and girls clubs, the city museum, and local professional artists. With new activities every week, the center is a beacon of diversity and long-lasting economic and cultural viability, drawing together people of all ages, ethnicities, and occupations—utilizing the Arts as a common bond. For Rutgers University, as an anchor institution in Newark, it is through the thoughtfully crafted relationship between architecture and community that the fabric of its urban neighborhood will strengthen and empower its citizenry. A great place, such as the re-purposed Hahne & Co. Building, will not only bring a community of students and neighbors together in a culturally sustainable space, but inspire it to do great things.