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.