Robert Cohen, of Hudson News chain, dies

Magazine distributor Robert B. Cohen, who built the Hudson News chain of newsstands from one store at LaGuardia Airport and changed the way travelers spend their downtime, has died at age 86.

Cohen was already a giant in the magazine and newspaper distribution business when he decided to launch a retail chain in 1987.

His stores were a break from the claustrophobic newsstands of the past, boasting hundreds of magazines instead of just a few dozen, with tall racks and bright lighting that invited customers to browse.

His son, James Cohen, called it a "new-concept newsstand." "It was something very inviting that wanted to draw customers in," he said yesterday.

Robert Cohen died Wednesday at his home in Palm Beach, Fla., of complications from a neurological disease called progressive supranuclear palsy, his son said.

A native of Bayonne, N.J., Robert Cohen took over his father's small newspaper distribution company, the Hudson County News Co., in 1947. The company was named after the New Jersey county where it was based. By the 1970s it had become the biggest magazine wholesaler in the United States.

He opened the first Hudson News at LaGuardia Airport. Instead of kiosks blanketed with overlapping periodicals, Hudson News newsstands were airy, brightly lit stores with racks that showed the entire covers of magazines.