Maus & Hoffman–A New Location For A Historic Las Olas Company

by Bernard McCormick Friday, December 14, 2018 No Comment(s)

A plaque in the median in front of Maus & Hoffman's original Las Olas location remembers William Maus.

There are very few businesses that can claim to have been in Gold Coast magazine’s first issue 54 years ago. Maus & Hoffman is one of them. In fact, that high-fashion clothing store was on Las Olas Boulevard 25 years before Gold Coast was born. The firm is pushing 80 years in South Florida. William Maus and Frank Hoffman came down from the summer resort town of Petoskey, Michigan, in 1939. After finding locations in Miami too expensive, they opened on Las Olas a year later. Among Las Olas institutions, only the Riverside Hotel (1936) is older.

William Maus became a legendary pioneer on Las Olas. At one time a dozen stores from northern Michigan had followed his company to Las Olas or nearby cities. Las Olas was far less elegant than today’s venue. Among the neighbors was a gas station and auto dealership. Maus was the man who backed the boulevard’s first good restaurant, the recently closed Le Café de Paris. Today Fort Lauderdale’s center of nightlife has numerous fine restaurants, serving the massive influx of new downtown high-rise offices and apartments. Maus & Hoffman expanded around the state years ago. Today, it has locations on Worth Avenue in Palm Beach and stores in Naples and Vero Beach.

William Maus died in 1980, but all five of his children became active in the business. The family jokes that “Maus” means mouse in German; thus “a mouse in every house.” Bill Jr. still works in Fort Lauderdale, as did his late brother Tom. Their brother John, president of the company, runs the Palm Beach store. A sister, Jane Hearne, was in Naples before retiring. Tom Maus Jr. now runs the Las Olas Boulevard store. There is even a fourth generation in the organization. Ted Maus, son of Bill Maus Jr.’s son Arthur, works in the catalog fulfillment division in downtown Fort Lauderdale.

Although it began as a high-end men’s store, it has enlarged its offerings to include women’s clothing. And, as of last month, Maus & Hoffman has a new and appropriate location—in a sense a marriage with the Riverside Hotel. Its old location just a half block away was sold, and the new store has the advantage of an entrance on Las Olas next to the high-traffic Riverside, plus a second entrance in the back from the hotel’s lobby.

It is a union made in history heaven—Las Olas’ two oldest institutions. We wish Maus & Hoffman and the Riverside another 80 years of success.

 


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