The man behind the camera

Dan McNulty captured Jersey City history through a modest lens

The pictures capture a Jersey City that no longer exists, freezing time in its tracks.
Here’s the Jersey City Garden, an event hall in the 1950s that stood at the corner of Franklin Street and Ogden Avenue. Now an apartment building stands there.
Here are loyal partisans filing into City Hall on New Year’s Eve for the annual greeting of legendary Mayor Frank Hague. Doubtful we’ll see a replay of that anytime soon.
Those moments were captured by one man – Dan McNulty.
From the 1940s through the 1960s, McNulty took his love of photography and turned it into a vocation that continues to draw respect from an adoring public.
On Sept. 11, as part of a tribute ceremony at the 9/11 Memorial Fountain in Journal Square, McNulty was inducted into the Circle of Honor surrounding the fountain, along with other local residents who have made a difference in the city. Had McNulty lived, he probably would have shied away from accepting such an award.

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‘He was matter-of-fact about it.’ – Mark McNulty
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McNulty died in 1976 at the age of 68. He was a modest man who, according to his second oldest son Mark, didn’t make a “big deal” out of his photography. Mark, along with his two brothers Brian and Dennis, their wives, and McNulty’s grandchildren and great-grandchild, attended the ceremony.
“Photography was something that he loved more than anything, but back then you didn’t talk much about what you were doing; you just did it,” said his son Mark after the ceremony. “He was matter-of-fact about it.”
Yet his photos are a big deal to people like former Jersey City librarian Kenneth French, an author of a 1997 book about McNulty’s photos who nominated McNulty for the Circle of Honor and lauded McNulty during the ceremony.
“As someone who grew up in Jersey City, his photos captured places that I remembered fondly and kept them alive,” said French after the ceremony.
And McNulty’s images matter to people who come to the Jersey City Public Library’s New Jersey Room every day to do research on Jersey City. Over 3,000 of his historic photos can be viewed in the archives.

He found life in snapshots

McNulty experienced his joie de vivre in snapping a Kodak and committing living images to film. This was at odds with the profession he was born into and practiced in his lifetime – working in a funeral home.
McNulty’s parents owned a funeral home on the corner of Montgomery and Brunswick streets in downtown Jersey City, and he would, later in life, do part-time work at the Quinn Funeral Home.
But according to his son, he didn’t like the work too much and did it just to help his family.
However, he was able to find a way to combine the two occupations in his life.
“Someone told me Dad had a darkroom in his parent’s funeral home,” Mark McNulty said. This fact is confirmed in Ken French’s book.
McNulty was able to parlay his fascination with pictures into making a living that helped support his wife Grace and their four sons (oldest son Dan Jr. is deceased).
He plied his trade for the Jersey Journal, Associated Press, Look, and other publications. He also was the city’s official photographer under Mayor Bernard Berry in the 1950s, and his son believes he was a police photographer.
That allowed McNulty the opportunity to feature such landmarks as the Margaret Hague Maternity Center, located within the old Jersey City Medical Center, and Journal Square in its heyday as the city’s shopping and transportation center. McNulty also was able to capture the political figures of his time including Hague, Berry, and John V. Kenny, as well as celebrities such as Connie Francis and Eleanor Roosevelt.
But his son has own favorite photos taken by his dad, which aren’t as well-known.
“I always liked the photos of the family he took that he put together for Christmas every year,” Mark McNulty said.
Ricardo Kaulessar can be reached at rkaulessar@hudsonreporter.com.

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