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Newark.
Newark is the largest city in New Jersey, United States, and the county seat of Essex County. As of the 2000 Census, the city had a total population of 273,546, making it the largest municipality in New Jersey and the 64th largest city in the U.S. According to the US Census Bureau, the city's 2006 population estimate is 281,402, an increase of 2.9% from 2000.[2]
It is located approximately five miles (8 km) west of Manhattan and two miles (3 km) north of Staten Island. Its location near the Atlantic Ocean on Newark Bay has helped make its port facility, Port Newark, the major container shipping port on Newark Bay and for New York Harbor. Together with Elizabeth, it is the home of Newark Liberty International Airport, which was the first major airport to serve the New York metropolitan area.
Newark was originally formed as a township on October 31, 1693, based on the Newark Tract, which was first purchased on July 11, 1667. Newark was granted a Royal Charter on April 27, 1713, and was incorporated as one of New Jersey's initial 104 townships by an act of the New Jersey Legislature on February 21, 1798. During its time as a township, portions were taken to form Springfield Township (April 14, 1794), Caldwell Township (February 16, 1798, now known as Fairfield Township), Orange Township (November 27, 1806), Bloomfield Township (March 23, 1812) and Clinton Township (April 14, 1834, remainder reabsorbed by Newark on March 5, 1902). Newark was reincorporated as a city on April 11, 1836, replacing Newark Township, based on the results of a referendum passed on March 18, 1836. The previously independent Vailsburg borough was annexed by Newark on January 1, 1905.[6] Newark is divided into five wards; North Ward, South Ward, West Ward, East Ward, and Central Ward.
History
Newark was founded in 1666 by Connecticut Puritans led by Robert Treat from the New Haven Colony.
The New Haven colonists had been forced out of power for sheltering the
judges who had fled to the New Haven Colony after sentencing Charles I of England to death.[citation needed]
They sought to establish a colony with strict church rules similar to the one they had established in Milford, Connecticut.
Treat wanted to name the community "Milford." Another settler Abraham
Pierson said the community reflecting the new task at hand should be
named "New Ark" or "New Work." The name was shortened to Newark.[7][8]
Trent and the party bought the property on the Passaic River from the Hackensack Indians by exchanging gunpowder,
one hundred bars of lead, twenty axes, twenty coats, guns, pistols,
swords, kettles, blankets, knives, beer, and ten pairs of breeches. The
total control of the community by the Church continued until 1733 when Josiah Ogden harvested wheat on a Sunday following a lengthy rainstorm and was disciplined by the Church for Sabbath breaking[9]. He left the church and corresponded with Episcopalian missionaries, who arrived to build a church in 1746 and broke up the Puritan theocracy.[10]
Industrial era to World War II
Newark's rapid growth began in the early 1800s, much of it due to a Massachusetts transplant named Seth Boyden.
Boyden came to Newark in 1815, and immediately began a torrent of
improvements to leather manufacture, culminating in the process for
making patent leather.
Boyden's genius led to Newark's manufacturing nearly 90% of the
nation's leather by 1870, bringing in $8.6 million in revenue to the
city in that year alone. In 1824, Boyden, bored with leather, found a
way to produce malleable iron. Newark also prospered by the construction of the Morris Canal in 1831. The canal connected Newark with the New Jersey hinterland, at that time a major iron and farm area.
Railroads arrived in 1834 and 1835. A flourishing shipping business
resulted, and Newark became the area's industrial center. By 1826,
Newark's population stood at 8,017, ten times the 1776 number.[11]
The middle 19th century saw continued growth and diversification of Newark's industrial base. The first commercially successful plastic — Celluloid — was produced in a factory on Mechanic Street by John Wesley Hyatt. Hyatt's Celluloid found its way into Newark-made carriages, billiard balls, and dentures. Edward Weston perfected a process for zinc electroplating, as well as a superior arc lamp in Newark. Newark's Military Park had the first public electric lamps anywhere in the United States. Before moving to Menlo Park, Thomas Edison himself made Newark home in the early 1870s. He invented the stock ticker in the Brick City.[12]
In the late 19th century, Newark's industry was further developed,
especially through the efforts of such men as J. W. Hyatt. From the
mid-century on, numerous Irish and German
immigrants moved to the city; the Germans established their own
newspapers, which other ethnic groups have emulated. However, tensions
existed between the "native stock" and the newer groups.
In the middle 19th century, Newark added insurance to its repertoire of businesses; Mutual Benefit was founded in the city in 1845 and Prudential
in 1873. Prudential, or "the Pru" as generations knew it, was founded
by another transplanted New Englander, John Fairfield Dryden. He found
a niche catering to the middle and lower classes. In the late 1980s,
companies based in Newark sold more insurance than those in any city
except Hartford, Connecticut.[13]
In 1880, Newark's population stood at 136,508; in 1890 at 181,830;
in 1900 at 246,070; and in 1910 at 347,000, a jump of 200,000 in three
decades.[14]
As Newark's population approached a half million in the 1920s, the
city's potential seemed limitless. It was said in 1927: "Great is
Newark's vitality. It is the red blood in its veins – this basic
strength that is going to carry it over whatever hurdles it may
encounter, enable it to recover from whatever losses it may suffer and
battle its way to still higher achievement industrially and
financially, making it eventually perhaps the greatest industrial
center in the world".[15]
Headquarters of the Prudential in late 19th century.
Newark was bustling in the early to mid-20th century. Market and
Broad Streets served as a center of retail commerce for the region,
anchored by four flourishing department stores: Hahne & Company, L. Bamberger and Company,
L.S. Plaut and Company, and Kresge's. "Broad Street today is the Mecca
of visitors as it has been through all its long history," Newark
merchants boasted, "they come in hundreds of thousands now when once
they came in hundreds."[16]
In 1922, Newark had 63 live theaters, 46 movie theaters, and an active nightlife. Dutch Schultz was killed in 1935 at the local Palace Bar. Billie Holiday
frequently stayed at the Coleman Hotel. By some measures, the
intersection of Market and Broad Streets — known as the "Four Corners"
— was the busiest intersection in the United States. In 1915, Public
Service counted over 280,000 pedestrian crossings in one thirteen-hour
period. Eleven years later, on October 26, 1926,
a State Motor Vehicle Department check at the Four Corners counted
2,644 trolleys, 4,098 buses, 2657 taxis, 3474 commercial vehicles, and
23,571 automobiles. Traffic in Newark was so heavy that the city
converted the old bed of the Morris Canal into the Newark City Subway, making Newark one of the few cities in the country to have an underground system.
New skyscrapers were being built every year, the two tallest being the 40-story Art Deco National Newark Building and the Lefcourt-Newark Building. In 1948, just after World War II,
Newark hit its peak population of just under 450,000. The population
also grew as immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe settled here.
Newark was the center of distinctive neighborhoods, including a large
Eastern European Jewish community concentrated along Prince Street.
According to legend, the Texas-born artist Robert Rauschenberg accidentally left his bus in Newark and spent a week there before he realized it wasn't New York City.[17]
Post-World War II era
Problems existed underneath the industrial hum. In 1930, a city commissioner told the Optimists, a local booster club:
| “ |
Newark is not like the city
of old. The old, quiet residential community is a thing of the past,
and in its place has come a city teeming with activity. With the change
has come something unfortunate—the large number of outstanding citizens
who used to live within the community's boundaries has dwindled. Many
of them have moved to the suburbs and their home interests are there.[18] |
” |
While many observers attributed Newark's decline to post-World War II
phenomena, others point to an earlier decline in the city budget as an
indicator of problems. It fell from $58 million in 1938 to only $45
million in 1944. This was a slow recovery from the Great Depression.
The buildup to World War II was causing an increase in the nation's
economy. The city increased its tax rate from $4.61 to $5.30.
Some attribute Newark's downfall to its propensity for building
large housing projects. Newark's housing had long been a matter of
concern, as much of it was older. A 1944 city-commissioned study showed
that 31 percent of all Newark dwelling units were below standards of
health, and only 17 percent of Newark's units were owner-occupied. Vast
sections of Newark consisted of wooden tenements, and at least 5,000
units failed to meet thresholds of being a decent place to live. Bad
housing was the cause of demands that government intervene in the
housing market to improve conditions.[19]
Historian Kenneth T. Jackson
and others theorized that Newark, with a poor center surrounded by
middle-class outlying areas, only did well when it was able to annex
middle-class suburbs. When municipal annexation broke down, urban
problems were exacerbated as the middle-class ring became divorced from
the poor center. In 1900, Newark's mayor had confidently speculated, "East Orange, Vailsburg, Harrison, Kearny, and Belleville
would be desirable acquisitions. By an exercise of discretion we can
enlarge the city from decade to decade without unnecessarily taxing the
property within our limits, which has already paid the cost of public
improvements." Only Vailsburg would ever be added.[20]
Although numerous problems predated World War II, Newark was more hamstrung by a number of trends in the post-WWII era. The Federal Housing Administration redlined
virtually all of Newark, preferring to back up mortgages in the white
suburbs. This made it impossible for people to get mortgages for
purchase or loans for improvements. Manufacturers set up in lower wage
environments outside the city and received larger tax deductions for
building new factories in outlying areas than for rehabilitating old
factories in the city. The federal tax structure essentially subsidized
such inequities.
Billed as transportation improvements, construction of new highways: Interstate 280, the New Jersey Turnpike, and Interstate 78
harmed Newark. They directly hurt the city by dividing the fabric of
neighborhoods and displacing many residents. The highways indirectly
hurt the city because the new infrastructure made it easier for
middle-class workers to live in the suburbs and commute into the city.
Despite its problems, Newark tried to remain vital in the postwar era. The city successfully persuaded Prudential and Mutual Benefit to stay and build new offices. Rutgers University-Newark and Seton Hall University expanded their Newark presences, with the former building a brand-new campus on a 23-acre (9 hectare) urban renewal site. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey made Port Newark the first container port in the nation. South of the city, it built
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