T he area surrounding the Grove Street PATH station has always been a crossroads, serving primarily as a transfer point between New York City and interior parts of Hudson County. The streets that intersect at the station – Christopher Columbus Drive, Grove Street and Newark Avenue – radiate outward like points on a compass to reach the farthest boundaries of the city, making the area an ideal transportation hub.
Collectively known as Downtown, the area is bounded by Hoboken to the north, Grand Street to the south, Jose Luis Marin Boulevard and the Hudson River to the east and the Palisades to the west. It’s adjacent to the financial center.
Previously a conglomeration of various Dutch settlements, Downtown is now home to two park-centered and posh residential districts, a vibrant commercial district comprised of small family-owned businesses and large national corporations, a thriving regional arts scene, and an emergent counter-cultural population.
And in keeping with its character as a business and cultural locus, it has stood as one of Jersey City’s most visible melting pots.
Ethnic groups today coexist harmoniously, but it was an entirely different story in the years leading up to the middle of the 20th century.
Catholic influx, and conflict
Like almost all other cities in the United States, Jersey City was governed in the 19th century by a Protestant gentry class who envisioned Protestantism as the American way of life. But famines and continued repression – both economic and social – brought hordes of people to North America’s shores, and Jersey City was a place where many immigrants stayed to find work and begin building their new lives.
The Italians and Irish were the most prominent ethnic groups to settle Downtown, lured to the area by the Erie Railroad Company, the single largest employer of unskilled labor in the region.
The Irish experience in Jersey City, however, was characterized by the same repression encountered back at home in Ireland.
"The native-born Protestant Americans viewed the arrival of the Irish with much alarm," said Robert Leach, a Jersey City historian whose great-grandfather came to Jersey City from Ireland during the 1860s. "Protestantism was seen as Americanism and the Irish were looked upon as a foreign invaders. Even the son of a mayor of Jersey City is quoted as saying the Irish were ignorant and superstitious. Nativist Americans then set out to defend a way of life they saw as threatened."
The fact that the Irish population in Jersey City grew at an alarming rate didn’t do much to quell Protestant displeasure. Records show that Jersey City’s Irish community ballooned in the mid-1800s, from 10,000 in 1850 to 30,000 in 1860.
The Protestants looked to the public schools as a possible tool to "Americanize" the Irish, and children from Irish families were required to read a passage from the King James version of the Bible and sing a Protestant hymn. Such tactics in Jersey City led to the infamous 1871 expulsion of Tommy Whelan, an Irish student who refused to sing a Protestant hymn when ordered to by his teachers.
But the Irish continued to put their roots in Downtown Jersey City, building throughout the area Irish parishes like St. Peter’s and St. Bridget’s and opening up corner saloons like the Shannon Bar that doubled as political meeting clubs. The Irish began to grow even more formidable in both numbers and influence within the city, and their great victory came in 1865 when they managed to elect an Irishman as Jersey City Police Commissioner.
That was followed shortly by a monumental event in 1871 – the Irish succeeded in electing an Irish Catholic mayor and an Irish Catholic Alderman.
"We now controlled the town," said historian Leach. "But the state assembly [in retaliation] revoked the municipal charter of Jersey City and issued a new charter where the town would be governed by commissioners appointed out of Trenton. They then gerrymandered various Irish districts into one horseshoe-shaped district."
For many years afterward, the Irish lived in the Horseshoe, which stretched from the north side of lower Newark Avenue all the way to St. Lucy’s Church near the entrance to the Holland Tunnel. At this point, one of the most important facets of daily Irish life in Jersey City revolved around the parish to which one’s family belonged.
The size of the Irish population in Jersey City at that point just further highlighted the government’s ghetto-ization of the community, and the discontent continued to percolate until it erupted in the notorious reign of Jersey City Mayor Frank Hague, a strong-armed despot nonetheless loved by the community he helped to redeem.
Italian Village
For the most part, Italian immigrants settled in small enclaves westward along Newark Avenue, with the most vibrant one located on First Street near Brunswick Street. And like the Irish, the Italians were given their own parish by the archdiocese so that they could retain their Catholic traditions. Sixth Street’s Holy Rosary Church was the first Italian parish in New Jersey, and it became the cornerstone of Italian-American life in Downtown Jersey City.
All kinds of local businesses with Italian names dominated the landscape in Italian Village during the first half of the 20th century. A sizeable length of Brunswick Street, from First Street down to Tenth Street, was constantly occupied with street merchants who would peddle produce and other perishable goods to passersby. Like the Polish in old Paulus Hook, everyone looked after everyone else and families regularly commingled with each other.
"It was just beautiful," says Eleonora Liguori, a former First Street resident who ran "Joe’s Prime Meats" at 356 First St. with her husband Joe. "Everybody loved one another and we all got along so beautifully. There were five other butcher shops, and no one was ever jealous of the others because we each had our own clientele. It was gorgeous. I wish those days were back again."
Liguori said the neighborhood was chock-full of Italian businesses, from her recently deceased husband’s own butcher shop to Faccone’s Pizzeria, the Ippolito Flower Shop, the Manna Bros. Pizzeria, the Keystone Restaurant and the Fiore Dairy. Also in that area was the DiFeo pastry shop, a store run by a man whose son now owns the largest auto dealerships in Hudson County.
The neighborhood was so tight-knit that business owners regularly took in neighbors as apprentices. Liguori’s husband Joe began working in his butcher shop at the age of 11 when it was still operated by a Mr. Migliore, who taught Joe Liguori the trade of butchering. Liguori then returned the favor later in life when he took in a neighborhood kid named Louis Gentile.
"We were a bunch of beautiful neighbors," Eleonora Liguori said. "In cases of death, you’d help out and bring coffee and cake. You extended your sympathies. I remember one year there was a terrible fire on Railroad Avenue that almost caught on our house. This watchman [at a nearby florist] really saved our lives."
This continued until the 1950s, when both the Irish and the Italians began their mass exodus from Downtown. Some people who lived in the older Downtown neighborhoods said the desire for own single-family homes with grassed backyards was the driving force behind their move to neighborhoods like Greenville and the Heights. Others, however, weren’t so diplomatic about their reasons.
Borinquen Barrio
The 1950s saw a large wave of Puerto Rican immigrants settle into Downtown Jersey City, most of whom hailed from Aibonito, a small town in the mountainous region toward the center of the island. Through word of mouth, Puerto Ricans from the town of Salinas soon followed.
Largely uneducated and unskilled, the Puerto Ricans – like the Irish before them – came to Jersey City in search of a better life. And although Downtown’s new Latino community shared a great deal in common with their forebears in terms of immigrant experience, they weren’t welcomed to Jersey City with open arms.
"It wasn’t easy," said Eliu Rivera, executive director of Downtown’s Puertoriquenos Associados for Community Organization [PACO]. "I used to attend School 37, and I used to live on Eighth Street. In order for me to get to the school, I had to cross Hamilton Park. And of course, when that was a large Irish community, we didn’t seem to appeal to them. I had to run all the way down Sixth Street. Otherwise, we would’ve gotten beat up."
As Rivera got older, running became less effective. The Latinos living Downtown soon realized that if they wanted to go anywhere and get there safely, they needed to travel in groups.
"If we wanted to hang out in a particular place, we had to go in small groups in order to not get beat up," Rivera said. "I remember going to a public pool on Montgomery Street. There used to be a pool there, and again, we had to go in little groups. Otherwise, we would have problems. And the language barrier didn’t help us much either."
After enduring hard times for more than 10 years, the Puerto Rican community began to organize. They founded associations like PACO that focused on bettering life for themselves and everyone else in the community. Rivera said one of PACO’s first initiatives was to start an English as a Second Language [ESL] program for the community.
"We needed to learn to speak English," Rivera said. "When we went to social services agencies at that time, they didn’t have bilingual personnel. And in the 34 years of PACO, that’s remained one of the primary programs. We have a need to communicate."
Rivera also said that through PACO, the Latino community was able to resuscitate the down-trodden Downtown area. In the years following the Irish and Italian flight, Downtown had suffered a high level of disinvestment.
"Downtown was a burnout," he said. "It was full of dilapidated buildings. No one wanted it. Affordable housing was a big need, and that’s why we started our own affordable housing programs. Borinquen Gardens was a partnership between the Hudson County Lutheran Parish and PACO. We started the rebirth of the Downtown area. We’ve done other housing, too, like the 24-story Paulus Hook Towers with the Ukrainian Association and other buildings in Union City and West New York."
And the construction of new homes Downtown coincidentally led to the emergence of another of Downtown’s visible ethnic groups: the Filipino community.
How the Filipinos came
Filipinos had been coming to Jersey City since the 1950s, but the major push began after 1969. Filipino families – most of whom belonged to St. Mary’s Church – were scattered across the Downtown area, in apartments where they could find the most affordable rents. And like the Puerto Ricans, the Filipinos encountered a bit of resistance.
"In the beginning, people weren’t too excited," said Santiago Muzones, a Filipino community leader with the organization Salamapo. "They threw bottles at us when we were moving in. They didn’t hit us, but they still would throw them a few meters away. So I don’t think it was a welcome thing. We didn’t always feel welcomed. But now we are part of [Downtown]. We are like brothers."
The close relationship Muzones is referring to is with Downtown’s Puerto Rican population. When PACO began building single-family homes on Grove Street in 1976, many Filipinos sought to purchase them and were helped tremendously by PACO.
"It was no plan at all, but through word of mouth, lots of Filipinos went after the homes and came around the construction area and were willing to buy the houses," Muzones said. "Every Filipino who decided to buy was given help, and the bank helped us. Before we knew it, all the Filipinos lived on Grove Street."
The area was so highly concentrated with Filipino families, Muzones said, that Jersey City renamed Grove Street between Second and Sixteenth streets as Manila Avenue.
"It brought the Filipinos and the Puerto Ricans closer together," Muzones said. The two communities even founded a joint block watch in 1983.
Artists, young professionals, and the gay community
Shortly before the "Gold Coast" real estate boom hit in the mid-1980s, Downtown was slowly being inhabited by more and more people who saw Jersey City as an affordable alternative to living in New York. Unlike the previous waves into Downtown, this new movement of newcomers didn’t identify with communities along ethnicity or nationality.
Unlike the financial district professional beginning to settle in Paulus Hook, these regional residents were creative types like artists, writers and musicians. Their move Downtown culminated in the emergence of an artists’ community at an old warehouse at 111 First St.
"The flagship [artists’ community in Jersey City] is the one at 111 First St.," said Bill Rodwell, an artist who keeps a studio there. "Then we saw a development in the early 1990s with the ProArts organization, which was formed to give artists who may not have had studios at 111 First St. a place to go to [for exhibitions and peer support]. ProArts filled a void in that sense."
The artists’ community Downtown continues to grow, with new gallery spaces opening up in various places. Rodwell mentioned the recent grand opening of the Metafora Gallery on Coles Street, which he described as smacking strongly of an event at a gallery in Manhattan’s Chelsea district. Space 27d and the Ground Coffee Shop, both located on Jersey Avenue, also serve as meeting places for Downtown’s creative community. Rodwell even said he heard a rumor that an art supply store was opening up on Monmouth Street.
And through the success of the creative community, another group of people began to see the potential of Downtown.
"The artists community was one of the reasons for the gay community to start moving to Jersey City," said Catherine Hecht of the Jersey City Gay and Lesbian Outreach [JCLGO]. "They’re open-minded and accepting of different ethnic and sexual identities. And they’re always inspiring things in the community, whether it was visual or written. [Their presence here] showed us that there were things to do here that we wouldn’t have to go elsewhere for."
When lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered [LGBT] people first started coming to Jersey City in the early 1990s, they did so because they learned of Downtown’s cheaper rents and quick access to Manhattan after living in New York for some time. And although what brings LGBT people to Jersey City nowadays remains the same, what’s new is that they are coming from all over the country.
"In the past three years, the increasingly obvious exodus of the gay and lesbian community from Manhattan [has extended to] other places like Florida, Indianapolis, Chicago and even California," said the Rev. Anahi Galante, a Jersey City resident and interfaith minister at Hoboken’s All Saints Church. "One of the factors to keep in mind is that realistically, it’s cheaper than Manhattan. And the advantage is that we have more liberal and less-intrusive laws for gay and lesbian people. New Jersey has been a much more welcoming state for gay and lesbian people. We even have a very good chance of becoming the first state to approve [gay marriage] in spite of President Bush’s maneuvers to distort it."
Galante said Downtown Jersey City is loaded with gay-owned and gay-friendly businesses that create a warm, welcoming community for LGBT people.
"I go to Basic [coffee shop on Eighth and Erie streets] and to Baker Boys [on Newark Ave between Monmouth and Second streets] and Coletta’s Bar and Restaurant [on Second Street] in Downtown Jersey City," Galante said. "I’m not a nightclub person, so I don’t go to Albert’s [at the corner of Marin Boulevard and First Street]. The thing is that you can see the increasing visibility not only in the amount of rainbow flags and posters in doors and windows, but you also see gay-owned stores and some gay-friendly stores having a continuous frequency of gay and lesbian customers."
As an interfaith minister, Galante even started an LGBT ministry in 1999 called "Unite in Grace" at Downtown’s Grace Church Van Vorst. All this, JCLGO’s Hecht said, is just stoking the already vibrant character of Downtown Jersey City.
"I think that by being out and open and visible, we are contributing by showing this is a part of the community that’s very proud to be in Jersey City," Hecht said. "And obviously with gay-owned businesses, we’re a part of the community that’s contributing financially. By having more tolerance in the city, we think we are showing that Jersey City is a community for everybody."
"And you start to get rid of stereotypes by interacting with the community," Hecht added.
Hecht said JCLGO sponsors weekly social events at various locations Downtown. For more information, visit www.jclgo.org or call (201) 333-5725.
FORTHCOMING