Newark, nicknamed The Brick City, is the largest city in New Jersey. Located in Essex County, approximately five miles (8 km) west of Manhattan, its location on the Atlantic Ocean, has helped make its port facility, Port Newark, the major container shipping port for New York Harbor. It is the home of Newark Liberty International Airport (formerly Newark Airport), which was the first major airport to serve the New York metropolitan area.
History
Early history
Newark was founded 1666 by Connecticut Puritans led by Robert Treat, making it the third-oldest major city in the United States, after Boston and New York, though it is not the third-oldest settlement. Newark is the city's third name; previously, it was called Pasaic Town and New Milford. The name comes from Newark-on-Trent, a town in England from where some of the original settlers arrived.
Newark was a relatively large town in the colonial era, known for its good beer, ciders, and tanned leather goods. In religion, it stayed loyal to old Puritan ways longer than the communities of New England, and was very receptive to the Great Awakening. When the seminaries at Yale and Harvard showed disdain for Great Awakening evangelicalism, several Newark ministers led by Aaron Burr (father of Vice President Aaron Burr) founded the College of New Jersey, later to be known as Princeton, in neighboring Elizabeth.
Industrial era to World War II
Newark Smelting and Refining Works, Ed. Balbach and Sons, c. 1870.
Newark's rapid growth began in the early 1800s, much of it due to a transplanted Yankee 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 would eventually allow Newark to manufacture almost 90% of the nation's leather by 1870, bringing in $8.6 million 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. In 1826, Newark's population stood at 8,017, ten times the 1776 number. (Newark, John T. Cunningham, Chap. 11, Chap. 18)
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 J.W. Hyatt. Hyatt's Celluloid found its way into Newark made carriages, billiard balls, and dentures. Edward Weston perfected in Newark a process for zinc electroplating, as well as a superior arc-lamp. 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, inventing the stock ticker in the Brick City. (Ibid, Chap. 18, pg 181)
Nor was Newark entirely industrial. 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 of Newarkers knew it, was founded by another transplanted New Englander, John Fairfield Dryden, who found a niche catering to the middle and lower classes. Today, Newark sells more insurance than any city except Hartford. (Ibid, Chap. 19, pg 186)
In 1880, Newark's population stood at 136,508, in 1890 181,830, in 1900 246,070, in 1910 347,000, a jump of 200,000 in three decades. (Cunningham, 201)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" (pop figures from Newark, pg 201; quotation from Kenneth T. Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier, 275).
Headquarters of the Prudential in late 19th century.
Newark was bustling in the early to mid 20th century. It had four flourishing department stores – Hahne & Company, L. Bamberger and Company, L.S. Plaut and Company, and Kresge's (later known as K-Mart). "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." (Newark, pg. 195)
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 terms of cars using it. 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, 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 only cities in the country to have an underground system. Beautiful new skyscrapers going up 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.
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.
Post-WWII era
But underneath the industrial hum, problems existed. In 1930, a City Commissioner had told a local booster club, the Optimists:
- 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. (Crabgrass Frontier, 277)
Most New Jerseyans attribute Newark's demise to post-WWII phenomena—the 1967 riots, the construction of the New Jersey Turnpike, I-280 and I-78, decentralization of manufacturing, the GI Bill, and the general pro-suburban fiscal order—but Newark's relative decline actually began long before that. The city budget fell from $58 million in 1938 to only $45 million in 1944, despite the wartime boom and an increase in the tax rate from $4.61 to $5.30. Even in 1944, before anyone predicted the rise of the Sun Belt or the GI Bill, planners saw problems on Newark's horizon.
Some attribute Newark's downfall to building so many housing projects, however, Newark's housing was always a matter of concern. The 1944 city-commissioned study showed that 31% of all Newark dwelling units were below standards of health, and only 17% of Newark's units were owner-occupied. Vast sections of Newark were just wooden tenements, and at least 5,000 units failed to meet any thresholds of being a decent place to live. Clearly, bad housing predated government intervention in the housing market. (Newark, Chap. 27)
One theory postulated by Kenneth Jackson and others is that Newark, having a situation where a poor center was 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 developed, since now the middle-class edge was divorced from the poor center. In 1900, Newark's mayor had had confidently thought out loud, "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." Of those towns, only Vailsburg would ever be added. (Crabgrass Frontier, pg 277)
Although numerous problems predated World War II, Newark was indeed 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. Manufacturers set up in lower wage environments and could receive bigger tax deductions for building an entirely new factory in outlying areas than for rehabilitating an old factory in a city. Billed as transportation improvements, pure and simple, I-280, the New Jersey Turnpike, and I-78, harmed Newark as well. They directly hurt the city by tearing the fabric of the neighborhoods they went though, and indirectly hurt the city, because the new infrastructure allowed middle class people to commute into the city.
Despite its problems, Newark did try in the postwar era. Prudential and Mutual Benefit were successfully enticed to stay and build new offices, and Rutgers University-Newark and Seton Hall University expanded their Newark presences, with the former building a brand-new campus on a 23 acre (93,000 m²) urban renewal site. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey made Newark the first container port in the nation and turned swamps in the south of the city into one of the ten busiest airports in the United States.
Even though it was not the sole cause of Newark's tragedy, Newark made some serious mistakes with public housing and urban renewal. Across administrations, the city leaders of Newark saw the federal government's offer to pay for 100% of the costs of housing projects as a blessing. While other cities were skeptical about putting so many poor and socially dysfunctional individuals together and thus were cautious in building housing projects, Newark avidly pursued federal dollars. Eventually, Newark would have a higher percentage of its residents in public housing than any other American city.
The Italian First Ward was one of the hardest hit by urban renewal. A 46-acre (186,000 m²) tract, labelled a slum because it was so dense, was torn down for multi-storey Le Corbusier-style high rises, to be known as the Christopher Columbus Homes. The tract had contained 8th Avenue, the commercial heart of the neighborhood. Fifteen small-scale blocks were reduced to three "superblocks." "As one First Warder put it, 'those projects killed the Ward. It was over after that.' Another First Warder, commenting on the project's size, put it even more bluntly: 'They built monsters down there.'" The Columbus Homes, never in harmony with the rest of the neighborhood, were abandoned in the 1970s, and torn down in 1994. (Immerso, "Newark's Little Italy: the Vanished First Ward.")
As pesticides and mechanization reduced the need for cheap labor in the South, five million blacks migrated to northern cities between 1940 and 1970s, Newark being no exception. From 1950 to 1960, while Newark saw its overall population drop from 438,000 to 408,000, it gained 65,000 non-whites. By 1966, Newark was majority black, a faster turnover than most other northern cities experienced. Evaluating the riots of 1967, Newark educator Nathan Wright, Jr. said “no typical American city has as yet experienced such a precipitous change from a white to a black majority.” The misfortune of the Great Migration and Puerto Rican immigration was of course that Southern blacks and Puerto Ricans were moving to Newark to be industrial workers, just as the industrial jobs were drying up. Newark blacks left poverty in the South to find poverty in the North.
In the 1950s alone, Newark's white population decreased from 363,000 to 266,000. From 1960 to 1967 its white population fell a further 46,000. Though white flight changed the complexion of Newark residents, white flight did not change the complexion of political and economic power in the city. In 1967, out of a police force of 1400, only 150 members were black, mostly in subordinate positions. The whiteness and brutality of the police force led it to be seen as an occupying force, rather than a protective entity. Since Newark's blacks lived in neighborhoods that had been white only two decades before, nearly all of their apartments and stores were white-owned as well. In 1967, when 70% of Newark's students were black, Mayor Hugh Addonizio refused to appoint a black secretary to the Board of Education. More importantly, Mayor Addonizio offered, without consulting any residents of the neighborhood to be affected, to condemn and raze for the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey 150 acres (607,000 m²) of a densely populated black neighborhood in the central ward. (UMDNJ had wanted to settle in suburban Madison.)
The poverty and lack of political power contributed to a growing radicalization of Newark's black population. On July 12, 1967 there were scuffles between blacks and police in the fourth ward, but damage for the night was only $2,500. However, following television news broadcasts on July 13, new, larger riots took place. Twenty-six people were killed, 1,500 wounded, 1,600 arrested, and $10 million in property destroyed. More than a thousand businesses were torched or looted, including 167 groceries, most never to reopen. Newark's reputation suffered dramatically. Tens of thousands of whites moved out. Middle class areas like Weequahic went from middle class white to poor black seemingly overnight. It was said "wherever American cities are going, Newark will get there first."
Post-riots and today
Riots in Newark
Newark saw a continued decline in the 1970s and 1980s. Whites continued to move out of the city, middle class blacks followed suit, and certain pockets of the city developed as domains of poverty and social isolation. Whenever the media of New York needed to find some example of urban despair, they traveled to Newark.
In American Pastoral, Philip Roth (who grew up in the city) puts into the mouth of his protagonist, Swede Levov:
- "[Newark] used to be the city where they manufactured everything, now it's the car theft capital of the world ... there was a factory where somebody was making something on every side street. Now there's a liquor store on every street -- a liquor store, a pizza stand, and a seedy storefront church. Everything else is in ruins or boarded up." (American Pastoral, pg. 24?)
In January 1975, an article in Harper's Magazine ranked the 50 largest American cities in twenty-four categories, ranging from park space to crime. Newark was one of the five worst in 19 out of twenty four categories, and the very worst in nine. Only 70% of Newarkers even owned a phone. The city ranked second worst, St. Louis, was much farther from Newark than the cities in the top five were from each other. The article concluded:
- "The city of Newark stands without serious challenge as the worst [city] of all. It ranked among the worst cities in no fewer than nineteen of twenty-four categories, and it was dead last in nine of them. . . Newark is a city that desperately needs help." (Harper’s, January 1975)
This isn’t to say that Newark had no achievements in the two and a half decades after the riots. In 1968, the New Community Corporation was founded, one of the most successful community building organizations in the nation. In 1987, the NCC would own and manage 2,265 low-income housing units.
Newark’s downtown also saw growth in the post-riot decades. Less than two weeks after the riots, Prudential announced plans to underwrite a $24 million office complex near Penn Station – dubbed "Gateway." Today the Gateway hosts thousands of white-collar workers, though few live in Newark, and the buildings themselves were not designed with consideration for pedestrians.
Before the riots, there had been an issue over where the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey would be built, the suburbs or Newark. The riots, and Newark’s undeniable desperation, made definite that the medical school would be in Newark. However, instead of being built on 167 acres (676,000 m²), the medical school would be built on just 60, part of which was already city owned. Today, UMDNJ does employ thousands of people in Newark, but a high percentage of them live outside the city itself, as do most of the medical students.
In terms of politics, Newark had elected one of the first African-American mayors in the nation in 1970, Kenneth Gibson , and the 1970s was a time of battles between Gibson and the shrinking white population. In North Newark, Anthony "Tough Tony" Imperiale represented the white backlash. Imperiale initially won fame by organizing the defense of the North Ward during the riots, and had an unsuccessful run at the mayorship.
Newark's taxes steadily rose; even today the average Newarker pays over 13% of his income in taxes, versus about 8% for the average Chicagoan. Newark’s mayor, Kenneth Gibson admitted "Newark may be the most decayed and financially crippled city in the nation." The higher taxes may have been necessarily to pay for necessities like schools and sanitation, but they did nothing for Newark's economic base; the CEO of Ballantine's Brewery even asserted that Newark's $1 million a year tax bill was the cause of the company's bankruptcy. (Newark, 339) The State of New Jersey might have been more sympathetic, but it was hard to justify aid when Mayor Gibson and the city council were continually voting themselves raises.
Newark elected a new mayor in 1986, Sharpe James. James has been a tireless promoter of the city in the media and in the State Senate, but he is criticized for his high salary (over $200,000 a year) and the corruption that he tolerates. James is also criticized by opponents of the new New Jersey Devils arena - they say that $200 million is far too much for a city as poor and small as Newark to pay for a one-sport venue.
In the 1990s Newark benefited from the soaring national economy and from huge increases in state aid for education. The city successfully attracted several high-tech concerns with its state of the art fiber optic network. Since 2000 Newark has actually gained population, its first increase since the 1940s.
The New Jersey Performing Arts Center opened in the downtown area in 1997, and in just a few years has brought 1.6 million people to Newark who might never have visited otherwise. NJPAC is known for its acoustics and the diversity of entertainment, from "Itzhak Perlman to 'N Sync, Lauryn Hill to the Vienna Choir Boys, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam to the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater."
Newark also established a minor league baseball team, the revived Newark Bears, but the stadium has been less successful than NJPAC.
In some of the areas most devastated by the riots, thousands of townhouses for middle-class residents have been built and sold. Downtown skyscrapers have been refurbished and plans are afoot to convert obsolete department stores and factories into lofts. Newark is no longer the car-theft capital of the nation, and if Harper's Magazine did another ranking of American cities Newark would surely not be last, though it would not be one of the fifty largest.
It is difficult to say how much of Newark’s 1990s Renaissance is real and how much is hype. Downtown contains an amazing amount of vacant property and is deserted at night. Elsewhere the crime rate has stayed high.
In any case, Newark does seem to have turned a corner.
Culture
Downtown Newark is not laid out on a grid, giving the downtown area character. There are several notable Beaux-Arts buildings, such as the Veterans' Administration building, the Newark Museum, the Newark Public Library, and the Cass Gilbert designed Essex County Courthouse. Notable Art Deco buildings include several 1920s era skyscrapers, like 1180 Raymond Boulevard, the intact Newark Penn Station, and Arts High School. Gothic architecture can be found at the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart by Branch Brook Park which is one of the largest gothic cathedrals in the United States. It is rumoured to have as much stained glass as the Cathedral of Chartres. Newark has two public sculpture works by Gutzon Borglum — Wars of America in Military Park and Seated Lincoln in front of the Essex County Courthouse.
The Newark Museum's American art collection is first class, and its Tibetan collection is considered one of the best in the world. Through September 4th, the Newark Museum has a special exhibition on the art and dresses of weddings. Newark is also home to the New Jersey Historical Society, which has rotating exhibits on New Jersey and Newark. The New Jersey Historical Society's exhibits through mid-2005 are on tuberculosis, Ellis Island, and on a black nightclub called "Dreamland." The Newark Public Library also produces a series of fascinating historical exhibits. Their current exhibit is on the cemetery art of New Jersey.
In February 2004, plans were announced for a new Smithsonian-affiliated Museum of African-American Music to be built in the city's Lincoln Park neighborhood. The museum will be dedicated to black musical styles, from gospel to rap. The new museum will incorporate the facade of the old South Park Presbyterian Church, where Abraham Lincoln once spoke. Groundbreaking is planned for winter 2006 and the grandopening will be in 2007.
Plans were formalized in November of 2004 for a New Jersey Jewish Museum at Temple Ahavas Shalom, in the Broadway neighborhood, the last synagogue in Newark. The museum will memorialize the Jewish community of Newark, which once numbered 60,000 and had fifty shuls.
Newark is also proceeding with plans for an arena for the New Jersey Devils.
Newark is the home of Rutgers University (Newark Campus); the New Jersey Institute of Technology; Seton Hall University's School of Law; the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (Newark Campus); and Essex County College . Most of Newark's academic institutions are located in the city's University Heights district. Rutgers-Newark is in the midst of a major expansion program. More students are requesting to live on campus and the university has plans to build several dorms.
Interestingly enough, Newark has produced more influential rap artists than one would expect from a city of Newark’s size. Queen Latifah, The Fugees, Naughty by Nature, and Redman all came from Newark or neighboring East Orange. Also, from 1947 until the mid-1990s, Herman Lubinsky 's influential jazz label, Savoy Records, was located at 58 Market Street in downtown Newark.
Neighborhoods
Main article: List of neighborhoods in Newark, New Jersey
As New Jersey's largest and most diverse city, Newark's neighborhoods are flavored with people from various backgrounds, including Latino, African American, Brazilian, Ecuadorian, Haitian, and the largest Portuguese population of any American city. The city is divided into five political wards - North, South, East, West, and Central - that encompass some 15 neighborhoods.
Geography
The official City of Newark, New Jersey web site gives the following information:
- Area, 24.14 square miles (63 km²). Smallest land area among 100 most populous cities in U.S.
- Altitude, 0 to 273.4 feet (83 m) above sea level; average, 55 feet (17 m).
- Latitude, 40o44'14". Longitude, 74o10'55". [1]
Demographics
As of the census of 2000, there are 273,546 people. The population density is 11,400/mile² (4,400/km²), or 21,000/mile² (8,100 km²) once airport, railroad, and seaport lands are excluded, one of the highest in the nation.
The racial makeup of the city is 26.52% White or Euro-American, 53.46% Black or African American, 0.37% Native American, 1.19% Asian, 0.05% Pacific Islander, 14.05% from other races, and 4.36% from two or more races. 29.47% of the population are Hispanic or Latino of any race. There is a significant Portuguese-speaking community, made up by Brazilian and Portuguese ethnicities, concentrated mainly at the Ironbound neighborhood.
There are 91,382 households out of which 35.2% have children under the age of 18 living with them, 31.0% are married couples living together, 29.3% have a female householder with no husband present, and 32.2% are non-families. 26.6% of all households are made up of individuals and 8.8% have someone living alone who is 65 years of age or older. The average household size is 2.85 and the average family size is 3.43.
In the city the population is spread out with 27.9% under the age of 18, 12.1% from 18 to 24, 32.0% from 25 to 44, 18.7% from 45 to 64, and 9.3% who are 65 years of age or older. The median age is 31 years. For every 100 females there are 94.2 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there are 91.1 males.
Newark is the most populated city in New Jersey.
The median income for a household in the city is $26,913, and the median income for a family is $30,781. Males have a median income of $29,748 versus $25,734 for females. The per capita income for the city is $13,009. 28.4% of the population and 25.5% of families are below the poverty line. Out of the total population, 36.6% of those under the age of 18 and 24.1% of those 65 and older are living below the poverty line.
Business
Newark has over 300 types of businesses including 1,800 retail and 540 wholesale establishments, eight major bank headquarters, including those of New Jersey's three largest banks, and twelve savings and loan association headquarters. Deposits in Newark-based banks are over $20 billion.
Newark is the third-largest insurance center in U.S., after New York and Hartford. Prudential Insurance and Mutual Benefit Companies originated and the former is still headquartered in Newark. Prudential is the largest insurance company in the world.
Newark is not the industrial colossus of yesteryear, but the city does have a considerable amount of industry. The southern portion of the Ironbound, also known as the Industrial Meadowlands, has seen many factories built since World War II, including a large brewery.
Other facts
Pioneer radio station WOR AM was originally licensed to and broadcast from the Bamberger's Department Store in Newark.
Newark was Paul Simon's and Wayne Shorter's birthplace. Rapper Redman is from Newark, and has written many raps about Newark, including "Welcome 2 Da Bricks" on his Doc's Da Name 2000 album. Brian De Palma lived for many years in Newark since he was 5 years old.
The City of Newark is presently governed under the Faulkner Act (Mayor-Council) system of municipal government.
References
- Cunningham, John T. Newark. New Jersey Historical Society
- Immerso, Michael. Newark's Little Italy: The Vanished First Ward. Rutgers University Press
- Stummer, Helen M. No Easy Walk: Newark, 1980-1993. Temple University Press
External links
Last updated: 06-02-2005 13:48:43
