The First Annual Arts and Preservation Awards Forum, hosted Monday by City Planner Robert Cotter, cited various preservation and restoration efforts in the city – including a group effort to preserve the city’s last cobblestone road.
At the same event, Cotter announced plans for a streetscape for the area of the Sixth Street railroad embankment, which was recently declared a municipal historical landmark by the Jersey City Council.
Heights resident Cliff Steinbring was given the Community Activist Award for his and the Riverview Neighborhood Association’s efforts to preserve Holland Street. Steinbring described Holland Street as the only remaining unpaved cobblestone street in Jersey City. Originally, Holland Street, which runs down from Palisades to Hoboken, served as the primary commercial route merchants from the industrial portions of the Heights to Manhattan in the period before the Civil War.
“We have been working for the past three years to get landmark status for the road,” said Steinbring. “Back then, Holland Street was dumping sight for old refrigerators and construction waste.”
The Riverview Association, according to Steinbring, organized efforts to clean up the street, which was declared a municipal historical landmark in April by the city. The results of the efforts were twofold.
“We have a twice a year clean up of Holland Street, once in the spring and once in the fall,” said Steinbring, adding that the next clean-up effort by the Association at Holland Street would be May 17 from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.
The other result was getting the city to secure Holland Street to keep out illegal dumpers.
“It worked very well, too,” Steinbring said. “We still get litter up there, but no more refrigerators.”
Holland Street began its existence as plank road in 1852.
“Before any street was the current location of Holland Street,” said Steinbring. “There was a plan walkway from Hoboken that went into the Heights at the current locations of Holland and Congress Streets.”
After the Civil War, the cobblestones were put in Holland Street. Fourteen years later, an elevated roadway was installed in the area to move trucks and carts from the Heights to Hoboken. Steinbring said Holland Street remained a favorite transportation path because of the long traffic jams that collected at the entrance of the elevator near Congress Street.
The Sensitive Restoration award was given to Hamilton Park residents Barbara Anne McGrath, James Ward and Jacques d’ Halluin, along with contractor Fernando Silva. There work was done on three brownstones at 650-658 Jersey Ave.
“These neighbors and contractor are commended for the sensitive restoration of their mid-19th century rowhouses,” said Cotter. “They replicated the original mortar and patterns of the houses. This is an excellent example of neighbors working in tandem to restore the visual continuity of a historic urban setting.”
“We went to the old tax records to find pictures of what the houses looked like,” explained McGrath. “The row house brownstones look like houses in New Orleans, so we wanted to restore them as much as possible to their original form.”
McGrath added that she and her partners matched the plaster around the window sills and doorways to recreate the look of the Jersey Avenue buildings around the turn of the last century.
“We didn’t want the boring cement on the front of the building,” McGrath added.
McGrath said work on her row house was already done and that the other two buildings would have restoration work on them done by the end of summer.
Cotter announced at the start of the awards ceremony that the city planning department was going to move forward with plans to create streetscapes for the Sixth Street Railroad Embankments which run from Brunswick Avenue to Washington Boulevard near Newport Mall. Members of the Hamilton Park Neighborhood Association had worked for more than a year to get historic landmark status for the giant stone embankments that once served as a turnaround point for now defunct Pennsylvania Railroad, which ran through Jersey City.
Cotter said $750,000 had been set aside for the streetscape efforts and the city would begin work on the project as soon as City Council approved the municipal capital improvements budget sometime in mid-summer.
“We’re very glad to hear this,” said Stephen Gucciardo, vice president of the Hamilton Park Neighborhood Association and a member of the Embankment Preservation Coalition. “This will be a great thing for our neighborhood.”
For information on the Holland Street clean up, call (201) 386-9481.