Bergen Square, at the intersection of Bergen Avenue and Academy Street in
Jersey City
Jersey City is the second-most populous city in the U.S. state of New Jersey, after Newark.Journal Square
Journal Square is a business district, residential area, and transportation hub in Jersey City, New Jersey, which takes its name from the newspaper ''Jersey Journal'' whose headquarters were located there from 1911 to 2013. The "square" itself is ...
district. A commercial residential area, it contains an eclectic array of architectural styles including 19th-century row houses,
Art Deco
Art Deco, short for the French ''Arts Décoratifs'', and sometimes just called Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design, that first appeared in France in the 1910s (just before World War I), and flourished in the Unite ...
retail and office buildings, and is the site of the longest continually-used school site in the United States.There has been a school at the northeast corner of Bergen Square since 1664. See
Nearby are the
Van Wagenen House
The Van Wagenen House, also known as Apple Tree House, is located near Bergen Square in Jersey City, Hudson County, New Jersey, United States. The house was added to the National Register of Historic Places on August 16, 2006.
History
The ho ...
The square and the streets around it are the site of what is considered to be the oldest municipality in the state of
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...
which was first established in 1660 as
Bergen
Bergen (), historically Bjørgvin, is a city and municipality in Vestland county on the west coast of Norway. , its population is roughly 285,900. Bergen is the second-largest city in Norway. The municipality covers and is on the peninsula of ...
in the province of
New Netherland
New Netherland ( nl, Nieuw Nederland; la, Novum Belgium or ) was a 17th-century colonial province of the Dutch Republic that was located on the East Coast of the United States, east coast of what is now the United States. The claimed territor ...
and, in 1683, became Bergen Township. Permission to settle there was granted by the
Director-General of New Netherland
This is a list of Directors, appointed by the Dutch West India Company, of the 17th century Dutch province of New Netherland (''Nieuw-Nederland'' in Dutch) in North America. Only the last, Peter Stuyvesant, held the title of Director General. As t ...
,
Petrus Stuyvesant
Peter Stuyvesant (; in Dutch also ''Pieter'' and ''Petrus'' Stuyvesant, ; 1610 – August 1672)Mooney, James E. "Stuyvesant, Peter" in p.1256 was a Dutch colonial officer who served as the last Dutch director-general of the colony of New Net ...
. The ''
Peter Stuyvesant Monument
The ''Peter Stuyvesant Monument'' is a memorial to Peter Stuyvesant and the establishment of settlement of Bergen, New Netherlands in 1660. It is located at Journal Square district of Jersey City, New Jersey. The statue of Stuyvesant by J. Ma ...
'' by
J. Massey Rhind
John Massey Rhind (9 July 1860 – 1 January 1936) was a Scottish-American sculptor. Among Rhind's better known works is the marble statue of Dr. Crawford W. Long located in the National Statuary Hall Collection in Washington D.C. (1926).
E ...
was dedicated on the square to commemorate the event in 1913. The square was surveyed and designed by Jacques Cortelyou and is the first example of what was to become known as a Philadelphia square in the United States. Though there no buildings from the period still standing, the names of streets (such as Vroom, Van Reypen, Newkirk, Tuers, Dekalb) and the grid they form still remain to mark the origins of the earlier village. In the immediate vicinity, there are cemeteries and the Old Bergen Church which were founded by the settlers and their ancestors.
Pavonia, the first European settlement on the west bank of the
Hudson River
The Hudson River is a river that flows from north to south primarily through eastern New York. It originates in the Adirondack Mountains of Upstate New York and flows southward through the Hudson Valley to the New York Harbor between N ...
, was temporarily evacuated during a series of raids and retaliations between the Dutch and the
Lenape
The Lenape (, , or Lenape , del, Lënapeyok) also called the Leni Lenape, Lenni Lenape and Delaware people, are an indigenous peoples of the Northeastern Woodlands, who live in the United States and Canada. Their historical territory includ ...
, the Native Americans who lived there at the time known as
Kieft's War
Kieft's War (1643–1645), also known as the Wappinger War, was a conflict between the colonial province of New Netherland and the Wappinger and Lenape Indians in what is now New York and New Jersey. It is named for Director-General of New Nethe ...
. Those who survived the counterattack were ordered back to the relative safety of
New Amsterdam
New Amsterdam ( nl, Nieuw Amsterdam, or ) was a 17th-century Dutch settlement established at the southern tip of Manhattan Island that served as the seat of the colonial government in New Netherland. The initial trading ''factory'' gave rise ...
, on the tip of
Manhattan
Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...
. After the treaty was signed in 1645, the communities at Pavonia and
Communipaw
Communipaw is a neighborhood in Jersey City in Hudson County, New Jersey, United States. It is located west of Liberty State Park and east of Bergen Hill, and the site of one of the earliest European settlements in North America. It gives its nam ...
continued to grow steadily, but were again raided in a conflict sometimes called the
Peach Tree War
The Peach Tree War, also known as the Peach War, was a large-scale attack on September 15, 1655 by the Susquehannock Indians and allied tribes on several New Netherland settlements along the North River (Hudson River).
The attack was motivated ...
in 1655.
Responding to settlers wishes to secure their holdings and wanting to re-establish control of the area, Stuyvesant negotiated a deal in 1658 with the Lenape for the larger area named Bergen, "by the great rock above Wiehacken," then taking in the sweep of land on the peninsula west of the Hudson and east of the
Hackensack River
The Hackensack River is a river, approximately 45 miles (72 km) long, in the U.S. states of New York (state), New York and New Jersey, emptying into Newark Bay, a back chamber of New York Harbor. The drainage basin, watershed of the ri ...
extending down to the
Kill Van Kull
__NOTOC__
The Kill Van Kull is a tidal strait between Staten Island, New York and Bayonne, New Jersey in the United States. It is approximately long and wide and connects Newark Bay with Upper New York Bay. The Robbins Reef Light marks the ...
in
Bayonne
Bayonne (; eu, Baiona ; oc, label= Gascon, Baiona ; es, Bayona) is a city in Southwestern France near the Spanish border. It is a commune and one of two subprefectures in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques department, in the Nouvelle-Aquitaine re ...
. A stipulation for the settlement was that a garrison be built so that homesteaders, whose farms spread out around the village, could retreat there in the event of an attack. The charter for the village gave it a semi-autonomous government, and it became the seat of government for the region, which included all the European settlements radiating from the west bank of the North River.
In 1664, a negotiated surrender gave control of New Netherland to the English, who on September 22, 1668, recognized and confirmed original town charter."The Story of New Jersey's Civil Boundaries: 1606-1968", John P. Snyder, Bureau of Geology and Topography; Trenton, New Jersey; 1969. p. 145. In 1674, soon after English possession of New Netherland was formalized, the village at Bergen became part of the
proprietary colony
A proprietary colony was a type of English colony mostly in North America and in the Caribbean in the 17th century. In the British Empire, all land belonged to the monarch, and it was his/her prerogative to divide. Therefore, all colonial proper ...
of
East Jersey
The Province of East Jersey, along with the Province of West Jersey, between 1674 and 1702 in accordance with the Quintipartite Deed, were two distinct political divisions of the Province of New Jersey, which became the U.S. state of New Jersey. ...
, and the "capital" of one of four newly established administrative districts,
Bergen County
Bergen County is the most populous county in the U.S. state of New Jersey.Hackensack.
To celebrate the 250th anniversary of the town's founding in 1910, ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' sponsored a seven-week composition competition for Jersey City students to study and write about its history.
Achter Col
Achter Kol (or Achter Col) was the name given to the region around the Newark Bay and Hackensack River in northeastern New Jersey by the first European settlers to it and was part of the 17th century province of New Netherland, originally adminis ...
*
Bergen
Bergen (), historically Bjørgvin, is a city and municipality in Vestland county on the west coast of Norway. , its population is roughly 285,900. Bergen is the second-largest city in Norway. The municipality covers and is on the peninsula of ...
*
Constable Hook
Constable Hook is a cape located on the north side of the outlet of Kill van Kull into Upper New York Bay in Bayonne, New Jersey.
The cape has long been an important site of marine transfer operations in the Port of New York and New Jersey. Just ...
Patroon
In the United States, a patroon (; from Dutch ''patroon'' ) was a landholder with manorial rights to large tracts of land in the 17th century Dutch colony of New Netherland on the east coast of North America. Through the Charter of Freedoms a ...
*
Paulus Hook
Paulus Hook is a community on the Hudson River waterfront in Jersey City
Jersey City is the second-most populous city in the U.S. state of New Jersey, after Newark.Van Wagenen House
The Van Wagenen House, also known as Apple Tree House, is located near Bergen Square in Jersey City, Hudson County, New Jersey, United States. The house was added to the National Register of Historic Places on August 16, 2006.
History
The ho ...
*
New Netherland settlements
New Netherland (''Nieuw-Nederland'' in Dutch) was the 17th century colonial province of the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands on the northeastern coast of North America. The claimed territory was the land from the Delmarva Peninsula t ...
*
Gravesend, Brooklyn
Gravesend is a neighborhood in the south-central section of the New York City borough of Brooklyn, on the southwestern edge of Long Island in the U.S. state of New York. It is bounded by the Belt Parkway to the south, Bay Parkway to the west ...