Komorn St & Main St corner shop (in the Ironbound)

Follow Komorn Street until you fade in the horizon of this picture and you'll get to Wilson Avenue where I used to live on the 1st floor of a go-go bar just at the corner of Barbara Street. 

See this quaint 2-floor house at the corner of Komorn & Main Street? Well, it used to be a corner shop in the late 60s & early 70s. I used to work the night-shift at a record factory on the corner of Komorn & Saint Francis St. We worked from Monday through Friday and knocked off a quarter-to-eight in the morning. 

I remember Dentinho (real name: Luiz) and I used to walk the one block to Main Street enter the corner shop and get served by a nice lady who owned the business. We usually got ourselves a cup-of-coffee, a single banana (10 cents) or a slice of industrialized apple-pie. Sometimes we sat at a table next to the street window and looked outside while drinking our hot coffee. Most of the times we got a pie or banana and ate it while walking our way back home to Wilson Avenue.

#1: corner of Wilson Ave. & Barbara St., the first place I resided in the Ironbound; #2 Saint Francis St., a vynil record factory where I started working in mid-October 1971 and met Dentinho; #5 corner of Komorn St. & Main St. where Dentinho & I had coffee and cakes in the morning after knocking off shift work; # 3 house on Wilson Ave which Dentinho shared with 2 other Brazilian fellows; #4 corner of Ferry St. and Wilson Ave.  

Saint Benedict's church on BARBARA STREET

Barbara St. corner with Niagara St. 

Saint Benedict Church on Barbara St. corner with Niagara St.

Sometimes it's hard to understand the things I do or the things I don't do. You see, when I arrived in the USA on 2nd October 1971, and went to live on Barbara Street corner with Wilson Avenue, in the Ironbound, a section of Newark just south of Pennsylvania Station, I was really eager to know every crack in those dirty sidewalks of Broadway & Manhattan, just like Glen Campbell sings in 'Rhinestone cowboy', that 1976 hit of his. 

By November 1971, I started working at a vynil record factory on Francis Street, just 5 blocks away from home. I would leave home at 11:30 pm, walk Barbara St. down, cross Niagara St., I would turn left on Niagara, walk one block and turn right at Komorn St.; kept walking south, cross Magazine St. up to Francis St. where the factory was located between Komorn St. and Kossuth St. 

You see, I must have walked past Saint Benedict Church, on the corner of Barbara & Niagara streets hundreds of times and never had the least curiosity to go in and see how the church was inside. Especially when Saint Benedict was supposed to be my Patron Saint for I was baptized in a Saint Benedict church in Marília-SP in 1949, and made my First Communion there in 1958.

The fact is a misconception of the name of Saint Benedict which in Portuguese is translated in 2 different ways: as São Bento and as São Benedito, a literal translation from Latin. To make things more complicated, we have 2 different saints bearing these names: São Bento is the pioneer of Catholicism in the Middle Ages and São Benedito is a Black priest who became a saint much later. 

São Bento (480-547) & São Benedito (1526-1589). 

Benedict of Nursia OSB (Italian: Benedetto da Norcia; 2nd March 480 – 21 March 547), known as Saint Benedict, was an Italian Christian monk, writer, and theologian. Benedict founded 12 communities for monks at Subiaco in present-day Lazio, Italy, before moving further south-east to Monte Cassino in the mountains of central Italy. 

Benedict the Moor OFM (Italian: Benedetto il Moro; 1526 – 4 April 1589) was a Sicilian Franciscan friar. Born of enslaved Africans in San Fratello, he was freed at birth and became known for his charity. As a young man he joined a Franciscan-affiliated hermit group, of which he became the leader. In 1564 he was sent to the Franciscan friary in Palermo, where he continued good works. He died in 1589 and was canonized as a Catholic saint by Pope Pius VII in 1807.

corner of Ferry Street and Wilson Avenue

House on the corner of Wilson Avenue & Komorn Street where I used to stop and buy me a cup-of-coffee and a slice of apple pie on my way home from working at the record factory on Francis Street. 

Wilson Avenue & Komourn Street. 

McWhorter Street

This is the very house Daniel & Elvira Rodrigues built for themselves on 87 McWhorter Street.

McWhorter Street runs parallel to the railway... 

Ferry St. with McWhorter St. in 1964. 

Green St. & McWhorter St. in 1960. 

McWhorter & Green St. 

QUEENS Midtown Tunnel & Verrazano Narrows Bridge

Queens Midtown Tunnel on 21st February 1940. 

Queens Midtown Tunnel under the East River on 13 March 1940. 

Verrazano Narrows Bridge, 1980. The Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge also referred to as the Narrows Bridge, the Verrazzano Bridge, and the Verrazzano) is a suspension bridge connecting the New York City boroughs of Staten Island and Brooklyn. 

It spans the Narrows, a body of water linking the relatively enclosed New York Harbor with Lower New York Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. It is the only fixed crossing of the Narrows. The double-deck bridge carries 13 lanes of Interstate 278: seven on the upper level and six on the lower level. The span is named for Giovanni da Verrazzano, who in 1524 was the first European explorer to enter New York Harbor and the Hudson River.

Newark & Manhattan

Newark (left) & Manhattan (right) with the Passaic, Hakensack & Hudson Rivers between them... 

same area seen from a different perspective; from West to East... 

Manhattan in a 1933 shot... 

1910 Newark ETHNICALLY

Here's how Ferry Street looked like in 1915... cobble-stoned, electric tram-cars and horse-drawn carriages going past Polk Street towards Saint Stephen's church. One could still feel the German presence in business names like Schlesinger's Shoes on the left-hand side.

By the time I arrived in Newark's Ironboud in October 1971, some 60 years later, the foreign composition of the Ironbound was very different from that of 1910. There had been an exodus of Italians, who moved mostly North to Bergen County's more affluent towns. 

Germans and Jews had fled the city in droves. One sometimes spotted an older German person who had been left behind as a cash register of an old business. German names like Hamburg Place next to Saint Stephen's Lutheran Church had been renamed Wilson Avenue after the USA entered the Great War against Germany in 1917. 

By 1971, the Portuguese had taken hold of Ferry Street and its vicinities. There was also an influx of South and Central Americans like Puertoricans, Brazilians, Peruvians, Ecuatorians etc. One could still meet few Slavs like Czech & Polish people who worked at factories and other business. Negroes were everywhere but not as many as on the other side of Penn Station. 

I don't think I have ever met a Chinese or an Irish person in the Ironbound in the years I lived there. Spanish and Portuguese were the main languages after English.

Newark foreign population circa 1910. Even though North is West, one can see who was who then: Jews & Germans (combined) made up the majority (90,000) then came Italians (50,000), Irish (30,000), Slavs and finally Negroes (11,000)... 'other races' made up the rest (34,000). 

By 1971, the ethnic population had changed.

This is how the map should be read. 

This is the Newark area I lived in the early 1970s.

Olden Newark Pennsylvania Station in 1911.

ITALIANS

The Ironbound, Newark: Convenient, but a World Apart

Living in the Ironbound, Newark, N.J.

The census in 1880 showed only 407 Italians in Newark. But by 1910, there were 20,000 Italians. As Irish immigrants, or their sons, rose to positions of leadership in the building trades and among street paving and railroad contractors, they needed workers for the menial tasks that once had been assigned to them.” Italians took these backbreaking jobs.

Italians came to this country for the same reason as other immigrant groups: for work. “Like all immigrants they were economically needed but socially resented…talking a foreign language that none here at that time understood….a dark complexioned people (with) fiery tempers.”

The Italians took the dirtiest jobs, eager to prove themselves in the land of the free. The few with skills quickly displaced the Germans as barbers and their knowledge of masonry was invaluable in a growing city. Both Italians and Russians turned to clothing manufacturing, jewelry making, and leather tanning, but most did the menial work of cleaning or on the railroad tracks.

When the Italians started coming to Newark around the late 1800’s (1873 or 1875), they settled in the Boyden Street section, which later became the First Ward (now North Newark). Due to the steady increase of Italian immigrants, St. Lucy’s Church was built in 1892. Subsequently three other “Little Italy’s” were formed as they spread out and improved their lifestyles. They were situated at 7th Avenue around St. Lucy’s Church; 14th Avenue, around St. Rocco’s Church; the Ironbound section, around Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Church; and in Silver Lake (Newark and Belleville) around St. Philip Neri’s Church. As the Italian and Irish communities expanded, boundaries were established to avoid territorial problems. The Italians gradually began pulling away from Boyden to Drift Streets, which they continued to occupy until the Newark Housing Authority pulled it down for Columbus Homes in the 1950s.

The Italians, like the Irish, built social and political organizations and gradually organized themselves into the political mainstream of Newark and Essex County. There are many elected officials at all levels of government, police, fire department officials, and other administrations; owners of businesses and professions, including downtown businesses and major professional firms, as well as successful educators and philanthropists.

Hugh Addonizio served as Mayor under the strong Mayor form of government in Newark from 1962-1970, while Ralph Villani was Mayor under the commission form from 1949 to 1953. Newark is noted also for its Italian underworld figures like Anthony “Tony Boy” Boiardo, who succeeded Longies Zwillman in underworld influence in Newark.

On fiesta days, thousands of Italians filled the streets with colourful processions. But the Little Italy around St. Lucy’s was destroyed by a combination of construction of public housing and Route 280; and Italians like other whites, began leaving Newark for suburban homes in the 1950s.

There were significant numbers of Italians living in the North Ward of Newark in the late 1970s, enough to elect Anthony Imperiale as an Independent when he ran for State Senator; and to stop Amiri Baraka from building houses in the North Ward. But by the 1980s, the powerful Italian voting block had moved to other parts of Essex County or down to the Jersey shore communities. The Italians, as an ethnic group, were the last to leave.

Charles F. Cummings, Knowing Newark: Selected Star-Ledger Columns by Charles F. Cummings.

John Cunningham, Newark. http://riseupnewark.com/chapters/chapter-1/italians/

Newark Theatre on Market Street in 1912. 

A neighborhood that’s convenient but a world apart

Luiz C. Ribeiro for The New York Times

By Julie Lasky

1st March 2017

In 2014, when Steven Kern moved to Newark to run the Newark Museum, he and his wife settled in a downtown loft. In July, the couple moved three blocks east to another country: the city neighborhood called the Ironbound.

Four square miles populated in large part by Portuguese, Spanish and Latin American immigrants and their descendants, the Ironbound has the intimacy and hustle of a European market town. “We walk to the bakery, the fishmonger, the wine store,” said Mr. Kern, 58, the museum’s director. (He also walks to work.) “It really is an extraordinarily agreeable lifestyle.”

The couple rented a two-bedroom apartment on Bruen Street, above the office of the architects who designed the six-year-old building. They pay about $2,500 a month for their unit, which has a large roof deck and ample studio space for Ms. Nieuwenhuis. Newark Penn Station, a hub for trains, buses, a light rail and a monorail to Newark Liberty International Airport, is three blocks away. “If I have to fly to the West Coast,” Mr. Kern said, “I’m at the gate 30 minutes after I leave my apartment.”

The Ironbound has long been appreciated for its convenience and culture, not to mention its 200-odd restaurants. Now residents are poised to take advantage of improvements to downtown Newark, as well. In January, Mayor Ras J. Baraka unveiled the $110 million Mulberry Commons project, which will develop 22 acres between the central business district and the Ironbound with housing, a commercial center and a three-acre park. The two neighborhoods will be linked by a pedestrian bridge over a highway.

Joseph Della Fave, the executive director of the Ironbound Community Corporation, said 800 units of mostly unbuilt market-rate housing had been approved for the neighborhood in the past few years. He described development as “a double-edged sword,” which threatens to raise home prices beyond the reach of many residents. His organization is pushing for an ordinance that guarantees 20% affordable housing in buildings with 30 or more units.

He was less ambivalent about projects to extend Riverfront Park, which connects downtown Newark and the Ironbound to the Passaic River, and to revive Ironbound Stadium, a beloved sports field that was contaminated by chemicals from a plastics plant and has been closed for 30 years.

“Whatever changes are coming, we don’t want to lose the character of the community,” said Augusto Amador, the Municipal Council member for the East Ward, which includes the Ironbound. “Anything that will be done will be done with that in mind.”

What You’ll Find

The Ironbound is defined by Newark Penn Station and Amtrak train tracks to the west, the Passaic River to the north, U.S. Route 1-9 to the east and Interstate 78 to the south. Real estate brokers often distinguish between “north Ironbound,” considered desirable because it’s near the long commercial corridor of Ferry Street, and “south Ironbound,” which is more industrial. 

Michael Rosa, an owner-broker with the Rosa Agency, which has an office in the Ironbound, described a typical home as an early 1900s multifamily house on a 25-by-100-foot lot, usually without a driveway.

According to the real estate website Trulia, the median sales price of homes in north Ironbound as of January was $215,000, a 22% decrease from the previous 12 months, based on 169 properties sold.

Fifty-three homes throughout the Ironbound were advertised on Coldwell Banker’s website on Feb. 25. They included a five-bedroom, two-family fixer-upper at 62 Vincent Street, priced at $129,900, and a six-bedroom, three-family house at 126 Union Street, priced at $609,000.

About 70% of residents are renters, and many units are in multifamily homes. But upscale apartments are more common, Mr. Rosa said, as developers seek to attract affluent tenants to the neighborhood. A two-bedroom unit with hardwood floors and decorative kitchen tiles, for example, was recently leased in a 2015 building on Polk Street, for $2,000 a month. Though that price is high for the Ironbound, where comparably sized apartments average $1,200, such spaces don’t remain on the market for long, Mr. Rosa said. And their popularity is causing rents to rise over all.

The Vibe

Filigreed gold jewelry, soccer jerseys and cases of the Portuguese water Carvalhelhos enliven shop windows along Ferry Street. On a recent afternoon, Seabra’s Marisqueira restaurant at 87 Madison Street was crowded with devourers of cockles bathed in garlic sauce and grilled lobster stuffed with crab meat. The general manager, Mario Martins, who immigrated from Portugal more than two decades ago, said customers flock from many places beyond Newark and sometimes drop in between flights at Newark Airport.

The Schools

Since 2014, the controversial One Newark program has allowed families to apply to public and charter schools anywhere in the city. Among several neighborhood options is Oliver Street School, a public school at 86 Oliver Street that serves 1,020 students, pre-kindergarten through 8th grade. On 2014-15 state tests, the last for which information is available, 30% of students met standards in English versus 51% statewide; 27% met standards in math versus 39% statewide. In 2016, the school moved to a $73 million building.

Lafayette Street School, a public school at 205 Lafayette Street, with a concentration on performing arts and justice, serves 1,200 students, pre-kindergarten through 8th grade. Forty-two percent of students met standards in English; 39 percent met standards in math.

East Side High School, a public school at 238 Van Buren Street, serves 2,100 students, Grades 9 through 12. The 2014-15 SAT scores were 374 reading, 404 math and 381 writing, versus 496, 518 and 494 statewide.

Ironbound Catholic Academy at 366 East Kinney Street, created in 2005 through the merger of three Catholic schools, serves 170 students, kindergarten through 8th grade. The tuition is $4,100 a year.

The Commute

From Newark Penn Station, the trip on New Jersey Transit rail to Pennsylvania Station in New York takes 18 to 27 minutes and is $5.25; a monthly pass is $152.

The History

Named for the rail tracks or forges that surrounded the neighborhood, the Ironbound is also called Down Neck because of its site on a bend of the Passaic River.

 

Starting in the 1830s, the area became a center for tanning, brewing and dye production. In the early 20th century, Portuguese and Spaniards began to arrive, as did African-Americans. Two out of three of the Ironbound’s current 50,000 residents were born outside of the United States.

Dutch Schultz meets his Death in Newark, N.J. on 24 October 1935

Arthur Simon Flegenheimer aka Dutch Schultz was born on 6 August 1901, to German Jewish immigrants Herman and Emma (Neu) Flegenheimer, who had married in Manhattan on 10 November 1900. He had a younger sister, Helen, born in 1904. Herman Flegenheimer apparently abandoned his family, and Emma is listed as divorced in the 1910 census.

Flegenheimer dropped out of school in the 8th grade to help support himself and his mother. He worked as a feeder and pressman for the Clark Loose Leaf Company, Caxton Press, American Express, and the Schultz Trucking in the Bronx between 1916 and 1919.

Flegenheimer was released on parole on 8 December 1920, and went back to work at Schultz Trucking. With the enactment of Volstead Act and the start of Prohibition in the United States the shipping company began smuggling liquor and beer into New York City from Canada. 

This led Flegenheimer to start associating with known criminals. It was also during this time that Flegenheimer became better known as "Dutch" Schultz (Dutch is a corruption of "Deutsch"). Following a disagreement, he left Schultz Trucking and went to work for their Italian competitors. He made his fortune in organized crime-related activities, including bootlegging and the numbers racket. 

With the end of Prohibition, Dutch Schultz needed to find new sources of income. His answer came with Otto "Abbadabba" Berman and the Harlem numbers racket. 

The numbers racket, the forerunner of "Pick 3" lotteries, required players to choose three numbers, which were then derived from the last number before the decimal in the handle (total amount bet) taken daily at Belmont Park. 

Berman was a middle-aged accountant and math whiz who helped Schultz fix this racket. In a matter of seconds, Berman could mentally calculate the minimum amount of money Schultz needed to bet at the track in order to alter the odds at the last minute. 

This strategy ensured that Schultz always controlled which numbers won, guaranteeing a larger number of losers in Harlem and a multimillion-dollar-a-month tax-free income for Schultz. Berman was reportedly paid $10,000 a week (the equivalent of $143,000 in 2016) for his valued insight.

Weakened by two tax evasion trials led by prosecutor Thomas Dewey, Schultz's rackets were also threatened by fellow mobster Lucky Luciano. In an attempt to avert his conviction, Schultz asked the Commission for permission to kill Dewey, which they refused. When Schultz disobeyed them and made an attempt to kill Dewey, the Commission ordered his murder in 1935.

New York Times, 24 October 1935. 

After Dutch Schultz disobeyed the 'Commission' and attempted to carry out the hit himself, they ordered his murder in 1935. He was shot once, below the heart in the bathroom of the Palace Chop House restaurant but staggered out and sat a a table (not wanting to die in the bathroom). The hit was carried out by Murder Inc members (Charles Workman and Mendy Weiss, acting on orders from Lepke Bucchalter). 

Schultz was shot at 10:15 p.m. on 23rd October 1935 while he was at the Palace Chop House restaurant at 12 East Park Street in Newark, New Jersey with Otto Berman, his accountant; Abe Landau, his new chief lieutenant; and his personal bodyguard, Bernard "Lulu" Rosenkrantz.

While he was in the men's room, two Murder, Inc. hitmen named Charles "The Bug" Workman and Emanuel "Mendy" Weiss, entered the establishment. Workman would be sentenced to 23 years in Trenton State Prison for the crime. In 1944, Weiss would be electrocuted for an unrelated killing at Sing Sing Correctional Facility on the same night as Louis Capone and Louis "Lepke" Buchalter.

Workman managed to enter the bathroom unnoticed to find Schultz either urinating or washing his hands. He fired at Schultz twice. A bullet struck him slightly below his heart, and ricocheted through his abdomen before exiting the small of his back. 

Schultz collapsed onto the floor, and Workman joined Weiss in the back room of the restaurant where they fired several times at Schultz's gang members. Berman collapsed immediately after being shot. Landau's carotid artery was severed by a bullet passing through his neck, while Rosencrantz was hit repeatedly at point blank range with 00 lead buckshot. 

Nevertheless, despite their injuries, both gangsters rose to their feet and returned fire driving the assassins out of the restaurant. Weiss jumped into the getaway car and ordered the driver to abandon Workman. Landau chased Workman out of the bar and emptied his pistol at him, though he missed. After Workman had fled on foot, Landau finally collapsed onto a nearby trash can.

Witnesses say Schultz staggered out of the bathroom, clutching his side, and sat at his table. He called for anyone who could hear him to get an ambulance. Rosencrantz rose to his feet and demanded the barman (who had hidden during the shootout) give him five nickels in exchange for his quarter. Rosencrantz called for an ambulance before he too lost consciousness.

When the first ambulance arrived, medics determined Landau and Rosencrantz were the most seriously wounded and needed to be taken immediately to Newark City Hospital. A second ambulance was called to take Schultz and Berman. Berman was unconscious, but Schultz was drifting in and out of lucidity, as police attempted to comfort him and get information. Because the medics had no pain relievers, Schultz was given brandy to relieve his suffering. Landau and Rosencrantz refused to say anything to the police until Schultz had given them permission after arriving in the second ambulance. Even then, they provided the police with only minimal information.

At 2:20 that morning, Otto Berman, the oldest and least physically fit of the four men, was the first to die. Abe Landau died of exsanguination at 6am. When Rosencrantz was taken into surgery, the surgeons were so incredulous that Rosencrantz was still alive despite his blood loss and ballistic trauma, they were unsure of how to treat him. He eventually died from his injuries 29 hours after the shooting.

Schultz received the last rites from a Catholic priest at his request just before he went into surgery; he was convinced that Jesus had spared him prison time. Doctors performed surgery but were unaware of the extent of damage done to his abdominal organs by the ricocheting bullet. 

They were also unaware that Workman had intentionally used rust-coated bullets in an attempt to give Schultz a fatal bloodstream infection (sepsis) should he survive the gunshot. Schultz lingered for 22 hours, speaking in various states of lucidity with his wife, mother, a priest, police, and hospital staff, before dying of peritonitis.

By receiving last rites, Schultz was permitted interment in the Roman Catholic Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Hawthorne, Westchester County, New York, although, at the request of his Orthodox Jewish mother, Schultz's body was draped with a talit, a traditional Jewish prayer shawl.

23rd October 1935, New York, USA, The bloodied bullet ridden body of American gangster Arthur Flengheimer, known as Dutch Schultz, lies slumped over a table in the Newark Palace Chop House Restaurant after being fatally wounded in a shooting, He died two days later in hospital (Photo by Popperfoto/Getty Images)

Palace Chop House (24 October 1935), an obscure restaurant on 12 East Park Place in Newark, N.J. where enemies trapped Dutch Schultz, far from security of old strongholds in NYC. (Photo by NY Daily News Archive.)

Robert Treat Hotel in Newark, where Dutch Schultz was staying on 23rd October 1935.

12 E Park Street, Newark, N.J. some time in 2008; soon after it was demolished.

12 E Park St turned into a parking lot... gone forever... 2019. 

Schultz a few hours before his death by blood poisoning... 

Detective Michael Beachman reenacts the scene in the Palace; 23rd October 1935; Detective Michael Beachman reenacts the scene in the Palace Chop House where gangster Dutch Schultz and three of his aides were shot to death. (Photo by Leonard Detrick/NY Daily News Archive).

Ironbound RAILWAYS

Ironbound as the name itself says is 'bound by iron' or iron rails... But there's one particular railway I'm concerned with which is that bridge that crosses over the main network of rails in this photo.

This particular railway link would go towards Ferry Street, It actually crossed Ferry Street somewhere... 

I remember it particularly well because in the summer of 1972, I was homeless for a period and I used to spend some of my time wandering through  its ways. 

Aerial view of Newark's Pennsylvania Station in 1935.

Four kinds of transportation enter Newark's new Pennsylvania Station on 4 levels. City transit lines take to the subway, while the inter-city trains from downtown New York, via the Hudson tubes, will emerge on elevated tracks still under construction on the left. Busses and taxicabs arrive on surface level. Through trains pass under the long shed on a fourth level. Escalators convey travelers in the covered passageways across the roof. 

Wilson Avenue bridge rail-car transporting scrap metal on tracks...

Ironbound...

Ironbound...

Penn Station Market Street exit...