Hoboken, NJ

Hoboken ( ; ) is a city in Hudson County in the U.S. state of New Jersey. Hoboken is part of the New York metropolitan area and is the site of Hoboken Terminal, a major transportation hub. As of the 2020 United States census, the city's population was 60,419, an increase of 10,414 (+20.8%) from the 2010 census count of 50,005, which in turn reflected an increase of 11,428 (+29.6%) from the 38,577 counted in the 2000 census. The Census Bureau's Population Estimates Program calculated a population of 57,010 for 2023, making it the 708th-most populous municipality in the nation.Estimates of the Resident Population for Incorporated Places of 20,000 or More, Ranked by July 1, 2023 Population: April 1, 2020 to July 1, 2023
United States Census Bureau, released May 2024. Accessed May 30, 2024. Note that townships (including Edison, Lakewood and Woodbridge, all of which have larger populations) are excluded from these rankings. With more than in data from the 2010 census, Hoboken was ranked as the third-most densely populated municipality in the United States among cities with a population above 50,000. In the 2020 census, the city's population density climbed to more than of land, ranked fourth in the county behind Guttenberg, Union City and West New York.

Hoboken was first settled by Europeans as part of the Pavonia, New Netherland colony in the 17th century. During the early 19th century, the city was developed by Colonel John Stevens, first as a resort and later as a residential neighborhood. Originally part of Bergen Township and later North Bergen Township, it became a separate township in 1849 and was incorporated as a city in 1855. Hoboken is the location of the first recorded game of baseball and of the Stevens Institute of Technology, one of the oldest technological universities in the United States. It is also known as the birthplace and hometown of Frank Sinatra; various streets and parks in the city have been named after him.

Located on the Hudson Waterfront, the city was an integral part of the Port of New York and New Jersey and was home to major industries for most of the 20th century. The character of the city has changed from an artsy industrial vibe from the days when Maxwell House coffee, Lipton tea, Hostess Cupcakes, and Wonder Bread called Hoboken home, to one of trendy shops and expensive condominiums. It was ranked 2nd in Niche's "2019 Best Places to Live in Hudson County" list, and 1st in 2022.

History

Etymology

The name Hoboken was chosen by Colonel John Stevens when he bought land, on a part of which the city still sits. The Lenape, later called Delaware Indian tribe of Native Americans, referred to the area as the "land of the tobacco pipe", most likely to refer to the soapstone collected there to carve tobacco pipes, and used a phrase that became "Hopoghan Hackingh"."The Abridged History of Hoboken"
, Hoboken Museum, Accessed February 24, 2015. Like Weehawken, its neighbor to the north, as well as Communipaw and Harsimus to the south, Hoboken had many variations in the folks-tongue. ''Hoebuck'', old Dutch for high bluff, and likely referring to Castle Point, the district of the city highest above sea level, was used during the colonial era, and was later spelled as ''Hobuck'', ''Hobock'', ''Hobuk'' and ''Hoboocken''. However, in the nineteenth century, the name was changed to Hoboken, influenced by Flemish immigrants, and a folk etymology had emerged, linking the town of Hoboken to the similarly-named Hoboken district of Antwerp.

Hoboken has been nicknamed the Mile Square City, but it actually occupies about of land. During the late 19th/early 20th century the population and culture of Hoboken was dominated by German language speakers who sometimes called it "Little Bremen", many of whom are buried in Hoboken Cemetery, North Bergen.

Early-European arrival and colonial period

Hoboken was originally an island which was surrounded by the Hudson River on the east and tidal lands at the foot of the New Jersey Palisades on the west. It was a seasonal campsite in the territory of the Hackensack, a phratry of the Lenni Lenape, who used the serpentine rock found there to carve pipes.

The first recorded European to lay claim to the area was Henry Hudson, an Englishman sailing for the Dutch East India Company, who anchored his ship the ''Halve Maen'' (''Half Moon'') at Weehawken Cove on October 2, 1609.Short History of Hoboken
, Hoboken Historical Museum. Accessed September 1, 2015. An entry made in the journal of Hudson's mate, Robert Juet, on that date, is the earliest known reference to the area today known as Hoboken, and would be the last known such reference until twenty years later. Soon after the area became part of the province of New Netherland.

In 1630, Michael Reyniersz Pauw, a burgemeester (mayor) of Amsterdam and a director of the Dutch West India Company, received a land grant as patroon on the condition that he would plant a colony of not fewer than fifty persons within four years on the west bank of what had been named the North River. Three Lenape sold the land that became Hoboken and part of Jersey City for 80 fathoms (146 m) of wampum, 20 fathoms (37 m) of cloth, 12 kettles, six guns, two blankets, one double kettle, and half a barrel of beer. These transactions, variously dated as July 12, 1630 and November 22, 1630, represent the earliest known conveyance for the area. Pauw, whose Latinized name is Pavonia, failed to settle the land, and he was obliged to sell his holdings back to the company in 1633.

It was later acquired by Hendrick Van Vorst, who leased part of the land to Aert Van Putten, a farmer. In 1643, north of what would be later known as Castle Point, Van Putten built a house and a brewery, North America's first. In series of Indian and Dutch raids and reprisals, Van Putten was killed and his buildings destroyed, and all residents of Pavonia, as the colony was then known, were ordered back to New Amsterdam.

In 1664, the English took possession of New Amsterdam with little to no resistance, and in 1668 they confirmed a previous land patent by Nicolas Verlett. In 1674–1675, the area became part of East Jersey, and the province was divided into four administrative districts, Hoboken becoming part of Bergen County on February 22, 1840. English-speaking settlers (some relocating from New England) interspersed with the Dutch, but it remained sparsely populated and agrarian.

Eventually, the land came into the possession of William Bayard, who originally supported the revolutionary cause, but became a Loyalist Tory after the fall of New York in 1776 when the city and surrounding areas, including the west bank of the renamed Hudson River, were occupied by the British. At the end of the Revolutionary War, Bayard's property was confiscated by the Revolutionary Government of New Jersey. In 1784, the land described as "William Bayard's farm at Hoebuck" was bought at auction by Colonel John Stevens for £18,360 (then $90,000).

19th century

In the early 19th century, Colonel John Stevens developed the waterfront as a resort for Manhattanites. On October 11, 1811, Stevens' ship the ''Juliana'', began to operate as a ferry between Manhattan and Hoboken, making it the world's first commercial steam ferry. In 1825, he designed and built a steam locomotive capable of hauling several passenger cars at his estate. Sybil's Cave, a cave with a natural spring, was opened in 1832 and visitors came to pay a penny for a glass of water from the cave which was said to have medicinal powers. In 1841, the cave became a legend, when Edgar Allan Poe wrote " The Mystery of Marie Roget" about an event that took place there. The cave was closed in the late 1880s after the water was found to be contaminated, and it was shut and in the 1930s and filled with concrete, before it was reopened in 2008. Before his death in 1838, Stevens founded the Hoboken Land and Improvement Company, which laid out a regular system of streets, blocks and lots, constructed housing, and developed manufacturing sites. In general, the housing consisted of masonry row houses of three to five stories, some of which survive to the present day, as does the street grid.

Hoboken was originally formed as a township on April 9, 1849, from portions of North Bergen Township. As the town grew in population and employment, many of Hoboken's residents saw a need to incorporate as a full-fledged city, and in a referendum held on March 29, 1855, ratified an Act of the New Jersey Legislature signed the previous day, and the City of Hoboken was born. In the subsequent election, Cornelius V. Clickener became Hoboken's first mayor. On March 15, 1859, the Township of Weehawken was created from portions of Hoboken and North Bergen Township.Snyder, John P
''The Story of New Jersey's Civil Boundaries: 1606-1968''
Bureau of Geology and Topography; Trenton, New Jersey; 1969. p. 148. Accessed May 29, 2024.

Based on a bequest from Edwin A. Stevens, Stevens Institute of Technology was founded at Castle Point in 1870, at the site of the Stevens family's former estate, as the nation's first mechanical engineering college.Leading Innovation: A Brief History of Stevens
, Stevens Institute of Technology. Accessed November 5, 2017. "When inventor Edwin A. Stevens died in 1868, his will provided for the establishment of the university that now bears his family's name. Two years later, in 1870, Stevens Institute of Technology opened, offering a rigorous engineering curriculum leading to the degree of Mechanical Engineer following a course of study firmly grounded both in scientific principles and the humanities."

By the late 19th century, shipping lines were using Hoboken as a terminal port, and the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad (later the Erie Lackawanna Railroad) developed a railroad terminal at the waterfront, with the present NJ Transit terminal designed by architect Kenneth Murchison constructed in 1907. It was also during this time that German immigrants, who had been settling in town during most of the century, became the predominant population group in the city, at least partially due to its being a major destination port of the Hamburg America Line, though anti-German sentiment during World War I led to a rapid decline in the German community. In addition to the primary industry of shipbuilding, Hoboken became home to Keuffel and Esser's three-story factory and in 1884, to Tietjen and Lang Drydock (later Todd Shipyards). Well-known companies that developed a major presence in Hoboken after the turn-of the-century included Maxwell House, Lipton Tea, and Hostess.

Birthplace of baseball

The first officially recorded game of baseball took place in Hoboken in 1846 between Knickerbocker Club and New York Nine at Elysian Fields. In 1845, the Knickerbocker Club, which had been founded by Alexander Cartwright, began using Elysian Fields to play baseball due to the lack of suitable grounds on Manhattan. Team members included players of the St George's Cricket Club, the brothers Harry and George Wright, and Henry Chadwick, the English-born journalist who coined the term "America's Pastime".

By the 1850s, several Manhattan-based members of the National Association of Base Ball Players were using the grounds as their home field while St. George's continued to organize international matches between Canada, England and the United States at the same venue. In 1859, George Parr's All England Eleven of professional cricketers played the United States XXII at Hoboken, easily defeating the local competition. Sam Wright and his sons Harry and George Wright played on the defeated United States team, a loss which inadvertently encouraged local players to take up baseball. Henry Chadwick believed that baseball and not cricket should become the national pastime after the game drawing the conclusion that amateur American players did not have the leisure time required to develop cricket skills to the high technical level required of professional players. Harry Wright and George Wright then became two of the first professional baseball players in the United States when Aaron Champion raised funds to found the Cincinnati Red Stockings in 1869.

In 1865, the grounds hosted a championship match between the Mutual Club of New York City and the Atlantic Club of Brooklyn that was attended by an estimated 20,000 fans and captured in the Currier & Ives lithograph "The American National Game of Base Ball".

With the construction of two significant baseball parks enclosed by fences in Brooklyn, enabling promoters there to charge admission to games, the prominence of Elysian Fields diminished. In 1868 the leading Manhattan club, Mutual, shifted its home games to the Union Grounds in Brooklyn. In 1880, the founders of the New York Metropolitans and New York Giants finally succeeded in siting a ballpark in Manhattan that became known as the Polo Grounds.

20th century

Few nonwhites had settled in Hoboken by 1901. The ''Brooklyn Eagle'' claimed that an unwritten sundown town policy prevented African Americans from residing or working there.

World War I

When the U.S. entered World War I, the Hamburg-American Line piers in Hoboken and New Orleans were taken under eminent domain. Federal control of the port and anti-German sentiment led to part of the city being placed under martial law, and many German immigrants were forcibly moved to Ellis Island or left the city of their own accord. Hoboken became the major point of embarkation and more than three million soldiers, known as "doughboys", passed through the city. Their hope for an early return led to General Pershing's slogan, "Heaven, Hell or Hoboken... by Christmas."

Following the war, Italians, mostly stemming from the Adriatic port city of Molfetta, became the city's major ethnic group, with the Irish also having a strong presence. While the city experienced the Great Depression, jobs in the ships yards and factories were still available, and the tenements were bustling. Middle-European Jews, mostly German-speaking, also made their way to the city and established small businesses. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which was established on April 30, 1921, oversaw the development of the Holland Tunnel (completed in 1927) and the Lincoln Tunnel (in 1937), allowing for easier vehicular travel between New Jersey and New York City, bypassing the waterfront.

Post-World War II

The war facilitated economic growth in Hoboken, as the many industries located in the city were crucial to the war effort. As men went off to battle, more women were hired in the factories, some (most notably, Todd Shipyards), offering classes and other incentives to them. Though some returning service men took advantage of GI housing bills, many with strong ethnic and familial ties chose to stay in town. During the 1950s, the economy was still driven by Todd Shipyards, Maxwell House, Lipton Tea, Hostess and Bethlehem Steel and companies with big plants were still not inclined to invest in major infrastructure elsewhere.

In the 1960s, working pay and conditions began to deteriorate: turn-of-the century housing started to look shabby and feel crowded, shipbuilding was cheaper overseas, and single-story plants surrounded by parking lots made manufacturing and distribution more economical than old brick buildings on congested urban streets. The city appeared to be in the throes of inexorable decline as industries sought (what had been) greener pastures, port operations shifted to larger facilities on Newark Bay, and the car, truck and plane displaced the railroad and ship as the transportation modes of choice in the United States. Many Hobokenites headed to the suburbs, often the close by ones in Bergen and Passaic

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