Downtown
''Downtown'' is a term primarily used in North America by English speakers to refer to a city's sometimes commercial, cultural and often the historical, political and geographic heart. It is often synonymous with its central business distric ...
Newark, New Jersey
Newark ( , ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of New Jersey and the seat of Essex County and the second largest city within the New York metropolitan area.James Street Commons- Washington Park at the north, the abutting Military Park and
Four Corners
The Four Corners is a region of the Southwestern United States consisting of the southwestern corner of Colorado, southeastern corner of Utah, northeastern corner of Arizona, and northwestern corner of New Mexico. The Four Corners area ...
and, after a two block break,
Lincoln Park
Lincoln Park is a park along Lake Michigan on the North Side of Chicago, Illinois. Named after US President Abraham Lincoln, it is the city's largest public park and stretches for seven miles (11 km) from Grand Avenue (500 N), on the south, ...
at the south. Halsey and its side streets have long been the one of city's corridors for shopping, dining, and entertainment. Since the 2000s, the street has undergone a revival as new projects have generated renewed residential, cultural and commercial activities, including a restaurant row. The development has been supported with the city's 2008 ''Living Downtown'' master plan and is part of greater trend in creating a vibrant downtown.
History and description
Halsey Street lies within the original settlement of Newark which was laid out soon after its founding in 1666: the land was part of the
plot
Plot or Plotting may refer to:
Art, media and entertainment
* Plot (narrative), the story of a piece of fiction
Music
* ''The Plot'' (album), a 1976 album by jazz trumpeter Enrico Rava
* The Plot (band), a band formed in 2003
Other
* ''Plot' ...
s distributed among the first settlers. It became a street during the early part of the 19th century during a period of great expansion. It is named for the
William Halsey
William Frederick "Bull" Halsey Jr. (October 30, 1882 – August 16, 1959) was an American United States Navy, Navy admiral during World War II. He is one of four officers to have attained the rank of five-star Fleet admiral (United States), f ...
(1770–1843), who served as first
Mayor of Newark
The Mayor of Newark is the head of the executive branch of government of Newark, New Jersey, United States. The mayor has the duty to enforce the municipal charter and ordinances; prepare the annual budget; appoint deputy mayors, department he ...
(1836–1837) after reincorporation as a city.
North of Market Street, numerous row-houses from the earlier era are still found on Halsey and neighboring streets. 31 Central is home to an artists' collective and the LGBTQ Center. There are plans to replace it with a new residential and retail building. The stretch between Central and New Street has sited street festivals since 2010. Rutgers-Newark, whose campus begins in the neighborhood and lies to the west in University Heights, announced plans in 2017 for its Honors Living/Learning Center to be built at Halsey between New and Linden Streets. This is projected for completion in 2019.
During the city's Gilded Age, a boom period at the turn of the 20th century in the
Roaring Twenties
The Roaring Twenties, sometimes stylized as Roaring '20s, refers to the 1920s decade in music and fashion, as it happened in Western society and Western culture. It was a period of economic prosperity with a distinctive cultural edge in the U ...
, many low-rise homes were replaced by new commercial buildings, including several department stores, such as
Hahne and Company
Hahne & Company (pronounced Hayne), commonly known as Hahne's, was a department store chain based in Newark, New Jersey. The chain had stores located throughout the central and northern areas of New Jersey.
History
The firm was founded by ...
,
Kresge-Newark
Kresge-Newark was an upper-middle market department store based in Newark, New Jersey. The firm was started in 1923 when its founder Sebastian Kresge purchased the L.S. Plaut Department store "S. S. Kresge Enters New Enterprise— Twenty-five ...
S. Klein
S. Klein On The Square, or simply S. Klein, was a popular-priced department store chain based in New York City. The flagship stores (a main building and a women's fashion building) were located along Union Square East in Manhattan; this lo ...
and
Orbachs
Ohrbach's was a moderate-priced department store with a merchandising focus primarily on clothing and accessories. From its modest start in 1923 until the chain's demise in 1987, Ohrbach's expanded dramatically after World War II, and opened numer ...
.
Ground was broken on the renovation of the Hahnes building in 2015, for
adaptive reuse
Adaptive reuse refers to the process of reusing an existing building for a purpose other than which it was originally built or designed for. It is also known as recycling and conversion. Adaptive reuse is an effective strategy for optimizing the o ...
as educational, residential, and retail spaces. A six-story addition was built on the Halsey Street side, featuring close to 100 apartments and an underground parking garage. Rutgers opened a new arts and cultural center on three floors of the Halsey Street annex in 2017. Called "Express Newark", it includes an 'arts incubator', media center, design consortium, print shop, portrait studio, and lecture hall, as well as exhibition and performance spaces. The project also includes a
Whole Foods
Whole Foods Market IP, Inc., a subsidiary of Amazon, is an upscale American multinational supermarket chain headquartered in Austin, Texas, which sells products free from hydrogenated fats and artificial colors, flavors, and preservatives. A USDA ...
,
Barnes & Noble
Barnes & Noble Booksellers is an American bookseller. It is a Fortune 1000 company and the bookseller with the largest number of retail outlets in the United States. As of July 7, 2020, the company operates 614 retail stores across all 50 U. ...
,
Petco
Petco Health and Wellness Company, Inc. is an American pet retailer with corporate offices in San Diego and San Antonio. Petco sells pet food, products, and services, as well as certain types of live small animals.
Founded in 1965 as a mail-ord ...
, CitiMD Urgent Care, and a restaurant by celebrity chef
Marcus Samuelsson
25 January 1971) is an Ethiopian-born Swedish-American celebrity chef, restaurateur and television personality. He is the head chef of Red Rooster in Harlem, New York.
Early life and education
Kassahun Joar Tsegie was born in Ethiopia. His fa ...
called Marcus B & P. Halston Flats, a restored former industrial building at
Raymond Boulevard
Raymond Boulevard is a major thoroughfare in Newark, New Jersey. The eastern portion of the road acts as the westbound member of a one-way pair; eastbound traffic uses Market Street and Ferry Street. Raymond Boulevard carries eastbound and westb ...
converted to apartments with retail/restaurants on the ground floor, opened in 2017. The Kresge building, now home to
Newark Public Schools
Newark Board of Education is a comprehensive community public school district that serves students in pre-kindergarten through twelfth grade in the city of Newark in Essex County, New Jersey, United States. The state took over the district i ...
streetcar
A tram (called a streetcar or trolley in North America) is a rail vehicle that travels on tramway tracks on public urban streets; some include segments on segregated right-of-way. The tramlines or networks operated as public transport are ...
system. The S.Klein buildings was demolished to make way for a new tower that is part of
Prudential Headquarters
Prudential Financial, based in Newark, New Jersey, has constructed a number of buildings to house its headquarters downtown in the Four Corners district. In addition to its own offices, the corporation has financed large projects in the city, in ...
complex, which has been based in the district since the company's founding in the 19th century. The Bambergers building, now called
165 Halsey Street
165 Halsey Street, formerly known as the Bamberger Building, is a 14-story, office tower in Downtown Newark, New Jersey. Built in 1912–1929, it was designed by Jarvis Hunt. The building spans the entire block between Halsey Street, Market Stre ...
, has become an
internet exchange point
Internet exchange points (IXes or IXPs) are common grounds of IP networking, allowing participant Internet service providers (ISPs) to exchange data destined for their respective networks. IXPs are generally located at places with preexisting ...
housing numerous computer systems including
DE-CIX New York
DE-CIX New York is a carrier and data center-neutral internet exchange point (IX or IXP) in the New York/New Jersey metro owned and operated by DE-CIX North America Inc.
DE-CIX New York is distributed across carrier hotels and data centers in ...
and
Lexent Metro Connect
Lexent Metro Connect was a New York City based neutral telecommunications provider that owned, operated, built and maintained its own dark fiber network in New York, Northern New Jersey, and surrounding areas. Based in New York City, Lexent prov ...
.
The area south of Market Street, dubbed SoMa by developers, includes the Teachers Village neighbourhood. This area is undergoing development under a revitalization master plan design by Newark native
Richard Meier
Richard Meier (born October 12, 1934) is an American abstract artist and architect, whose geometric designs make prominent use of the color white. A winner of the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1984, Meier has designed several iconic buildings ...
, which in turn has stimulated other building and renovation projects. It is home to Hobby's, a landmark delicatessen luncheonette, and new restaurants, shops, and a planned
Eataly
Eataly is a chain of large format/footprint Italian marketplaces (food halls) comprising a variety of restaurants, food and beverage counters, bakery, retail items, and a cooking school. Eataly was founded by Oscar Farinetti, an entrepreneur for ...
-style food marketplace. For much of the 20th century, the neighborhood was an entertainment district, including cinemas and the venues The Key Club and
Sparky J's
Sparky J's, previously known as the Cadillac Club, was a popular jazz club in downtown Newark, New Jersey. Sparky J's often featured soul jazz or funky jazz best exemplified by the organ combo, a band usually consisting of a Hammond B-3 organist, ...
. The Newark Female Charitable Society is a group of historic buildings on Halsey at Hill Street.
Halsey stops for two blocks, the
street grid
In urban planning, the grid plan, grid street plan, or gridiron plan is a type of city plan in which streets run at right angles to each other, forming a grid.
Two inherent characteristics of the grid plan, frequent intersections and orthogona ...
having been broken during a period of urban renewal along Nevada Street. It then continues into the Lincoln Park neighborhood, former home of the radio station
WNSW
WNSW (1430 AM) is a religious-formatted broadcast radio station licensed to Newark, New Jersey, serving the New York Metropolitan area. Since 2014, the station has been owned and operated by Starboard Broadcasting's Relevant Radio Roman Cath ...
and current home of the art gallery
City Without Walls
''City Without Walls and other poems'' is a book by W. H. Auden, published in 1969.
The book contains Auden's shorter poems written from 1965 through 1968, together with his translations of the lyrics of Bertolt Brecht's '' Mother Courage'', and ...
. This stretch of the street is more residential. Since the new millennium, many new multi-family apartment buildings have been constructed, including a project built using shipping containers and other housing developments that are "fully affordable". New two-family homes have been built on adjacent streets. Plans have been announced for the development of the Facade, an outdoor performance space, on the grounds of the South Park Calvary United Presbyterian Church. At its southern end is the
Catedral Evangelica Reformada
Catedral Evangelica Reformada, originally the Clinton Avenue Reformed Church, is a historic church located at 27 Lincoln Park and Halsey Street in the Lincoln Park neighborhood of Newark in Essex County, New Jersey. It was added to the Nation ...
.
In June 2020, a stretch of the street was painted with ''All Black Lives Matter''.
Gallery
File:Hahnes@HalseyNewSt2015renovate.JPG, Hahnes and Company Building
File:Gibraltar Building - Newark - Halsey Street (former Prudential Hdqtrs).jpg, Gibraltor Building
File:Market Street & HalseyStreet, Newark.jpg, Halsey at Market
File:HalseyWilliamNewark1.JPG, Halsey at William
File:Newark Female Charitable Society 305 Halsey.jpg, Female Charitable Society at Hill Street
File:Highrises and a Gas Station (13658583254).jpg, View east of Court Street at Nevada Street
File:HalseySt-WillowsNewark.tif, Halsey at W. Kinney
File:LincolnParkFarmNewark.tiff, South Park Calvary United Presbyterian Church Facade
File:CityWithoutWallsNewarkfacade.JPG, City Without Walls Gallery (cWOW)
File:Entrance to Catedral Evangelica Reformada at Lincoln Park.jpg, Catedral Evangelica Reformada
See also
*
Ferry Street (Newark)
The Ironbound is a neighborhood in the city of Newark in Essex County, New Jersey, United States. It is a large working-class multi-ethnic community, covering approximately of well maintained streets and homes. Historically, the area was cal ...
*
McCarter Highway
Route 21 is a state highway in northern New Jersey, running from the Newark Airport Interchange with U.S. Route 1/9 (US 1-9) and US 22 in Newark, Essex County to an interchange with US 46 in Clifton, Passaic County. The rou ...
*
List of tallest buildings in Newark
Newark, the largest city in New Jersey and second largest in New York metropolitan area, is one of the United States' major air, shipping, and rail hubs. It has a distinctive skyline, though shorter than that of much larger New York City and s ...