Charlene Burke knows the west side of Jersey City like the back of her hand.
Driving through the newly established West Bergen-East Lincoln Park Historic District, she rattles off details like a seasoned tour guide.
Burke, along with a number of other local residents, has been credited with helping establish the new district.
“This is a large historic district,” she says, driving toward the northern edge at Montgomery Street and Kennedy Boulevard, where St. Peter’s University ends. The towers of the First Baptist Church and large Victorian home known as The Guarani House mark what she calls “the gateway” to the area.
The district, which runs from a sliver of Montgomery Street in the north to both sides of Harrison Avenue on the south, is the first historic district outside of downtown.
Though West Side Avenue between Kensington and Harrison Avenues marks its western boundary, the district includes St. Aloysius Church, and several associated buildings. The eastern section includes most of the west side of Bergen Avenue, with a few buildings on the east side.
“Some of these were problematic for us,” Burke says, referring to a number of residents who opposed the historic designation, even though they lived in historic buildings.
A Wide Swath
The 107-acre district at the crest of Bergen Hill is mostly a residential neighborhood composed of historic, upscale, single-family houses and multi-family apartment buildings interspersed with attractive period churches, clubhouses, schools, and a firehouse.
Not as compact as downtown historic districts, this district has about 587 buildings that vary in style and were constructed from 1861 to 1945.
For almost a century Bergen Hill was the fashionable section of town, home to the city and state political and professional elite. A U.S. senator, two New Jersey governors, and two State Supreme Court Justices lived in the district, as did prominent politicians, lawyers, doctors, journalists, bankers, businesspeople, and industrialists. The Fairmount Apartments and the Jersey City YMCA have been listed in the National Register of Historic Places.
Though an upscale neighborhood, Duncan Avenue had its fair share of working-class residences, with a small commercial center not found elsewhere in the district.
Before Jersey City incorporated in 1870, this section was part of Bergen Town, a rural township near the Dutch colonial village of Bergen with a farm and large country estates. Many of the existing streets still follow the long, narrow Dutch Colonial blocks.
“These were large estates, which is why the blocks are like they are today,” Burke says.
A Mosaic of Styles
New residential development came late in the 19th century, driven by an influx of people. Large apartment houses were built mostly from the 1910s to the 1930s, reflecting further growth.
In 1905, Hudson County established West Side Park at the base of Bergen Hill on the Hackensack River. It was renamed Lincoln Park in 1930 following the dedication of a statue of Abraham Lincoln by noted sculptor James Earle Fraser.
Most of the buildings are considered late Victorian and late 19th and 20th century revivals. But Gothic, Italianate, Second Empire, Queen Anne, Shingle Style, Renaissance, Colonial Revival, Classical Revival, Tudor Revival, Late Gothic Revival, Italian Renaissance, French Renaissance, Mission/Spanish Colonial Revival, Art Deco, and modern can be found. The brownstone was not widely built in this part of the city. More popular was a cross-gabled brick Victorian with gabled brick dormers and decorative brackets. Upscale developers and homeowners tended to maintain setbacks and other architectural features of their times.
The only building over seven stories is the 10-story Duncan Apartments at 2600 Kennedy Blvd., better known as “The Hague,” partly because its penthouse was home to legendary Jersey City Mayor Frank Hague.
St. Dominic’s Academy, at 75 Duncan Ave., is currently a girls’ school occupying the site of the former Carteret Club, an exclusive men’s club built in 1917. “Men’s clubs were popular then,” says Burke. The clubhouse was a hub for the business and political elite to gather for cards, billiards, tennis, and other diversions.
Along Bergen Avenue was the Home for Aged Women and the Bergen Lyceum, built in 1915 as a private library, now a church.
Down Bergen Avenue is the Gothic Revival-style Emory Methodist Church, sold in 1965 to the Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, the town’s oldest African-American congregation. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave a speech there on March 27, 1968, days before he was assassinated.—JCM