Resort. Birthplace of organized baseball. Artists’ haven. Stomping ground for crooner/actor Frank Sinatra. Transportation hub. College town. Restaurant mecca. Home for thousands of close-knit families seeking an ideal way of life.
If one constant has existed throughout Hoboken over its first 150 years, it has been its changing roles. The mile-square city has served its residents and visitors in many incarnations. It’s no surprise that a diverse, compact place in a desirable location would lure so many different kinds of people ever since (and even before) its incorporation as a city in 1855.
This concludes the year-long weekly column by the Hoboken Reporter on the city’s history. From the industry to the people to the milestones and landmarks, we’ve enjoyed looking back at the town’s changing times.
The following is a summary of some of the topics that have been covered, similar to those that were covered in our centennial booklet that was published last spring. Extra copies of the booklet are still available at the Reporter offices and at the Hoboken Historical Museum for five dollars each. The year-long series is available online at www.hudsonreporter.com.
This series was only possible through the invaluable assistance and support of many city organizations and individuals, including the following: the Hoboken Public Library, the Hoboken Police and Fire departments, City Clerk James Farina and his staff, the Congressman Frank J. Guarini Library at New Jersey City University, the New Jersey State Library in Trenton, the staff of the New Jersey Room in the Jersey City Public Library, Michael Bucino, Arturo Martinez and the Hoboken Public Library, Al Mankoff, Angelo Valente, Evelyn Smith, Dorothy A. McNeil and the Hoboken Branch of the NAACP, Little League Baseball, Inc., Ed McCormack, Bob Foster and the Hoboken Historical Museum, and Hoboken historians George Long Moller, Marie and Leonard A. Luizzi, Nicholas Acocella, Margaret O’Brien, Jane Marchiony Paretti, David Cogswell, and Jim Hans.
Early Hoboken
Hoboken has been shaped by its times. Before the city’s official incorporation 150 years ago, it was one of the most popular resorts in America, luring dignitaries from New York such as John Jacob Astor, the wealthiest American at the time. Sports lovers came to race yachts and horses or to watch a nascent Ivy League football game.
In the latter part of the 19th century, immigrants arrived from Italy, Ireland and Germany, and made the area more residential and blue collar. Churches, schools, and restaurants rose to serve these diverse populations.
In the early 1900s, a population of approximately 70,000 occupied the rowhomes and tenements. There were places for them to work all along the waterfront and in the city’s many factories. Before World War I, Hoboken’s boat slips harbored German luxury liners and other commercial vessels.
But when war broke out in the early 1900s and the government took over the piers, the waterfront served a new purpose – to see thousands of servicemen off to Europe.
At the same time, the character of the city began to change. When the federal government froze Germany’s assets on the piers, the city’s economy was devastated. An impact was also felt on industries in the city’s interior, which no longer had convenient means to transport their goods out of the city.
After the first war and the Great Depression, the remaining industries rebounded. Longshoremen on the piers drank and ate at local taverns, resulting in a continuation in the popularity of Hoboken’s liquor industry, which had begun with the first brewery in America in 1642.
When World War II came, the city continued its blue-collar factory presence. Shipyards on the waterfront built and repaired ships for the war. Sandwiched between the shipyards and piers was national manufacturing giant Maxwell House Coffee.
In the 1950s and 1960s, new immigrants arrived from Puerto Rico and other Latin American countries to live and work here. Factory jobs like those at the Tootsie Roll factory on 14th Street employed them.
In the 1960s and 1970s, low- and moderate-income housing was built to house Hoboken’s longtime residents.
The modern mile-square city
Artists and young professionals discovered Hoboken in the 1970s and 1980s as a welcome alternative to Manhattan’s escalating rents.
A new period of strife started in the 1980s with condominium conversions and rent hikes. The newcomers and their infusion of purchasing dollars helped turn Hoboken into a glittering city once again, but some felt the price was too high. Adjustments to the city’s rent control laws helped keep the city’s longtime populace in their homes.
Industry slowly left Hoboken as the town became increasingly residential, with some brownstones selling for millions of dollars. The Maxwell House factory closed in 1992.
In the 1990s, development continued at a rapid pace, and four new residential areas on the waterfront made that area – desolate and unreachable since the demise of the shipyards – finally blossom again.
Today, Hoboken sees a return of families, new forms of transportation such as the light rail trains, and numerous new parks.
It also sees various groups who became active in politics – a sign that people care about where they live.
Looking ahead
Will you be here in 2055 when Hoboken celebrates its bicentennial? It’s likely that by then, another slew of changes will have rippled in waves over the city, casting it in new, diverse roles.
Hopefully what won’t change will be residents’ concern and love for the city – expressed by this year’s 150th celebration.
All of the past columns from this year-long series will remain online, accessible by visiting www.hobokenreporter.com, scrolling down the left-hand side of the page and clicking on “150th Anniversary.”