The Axe on the Hudson: How North Bergen Became Itself
From a Lenape settlement in the Bergen Woods to a notorious
gambling grandstand to La Avenida — the long, unlikely making of
our town.
Look at a map of Hudson County and you'll spot us right away: the
inverted "L," the town shaped like an axe. That outline is no
surveying accident. It is the scar tissue of secessions, gambling
money, immigrant waves, and one very famous left hook.
The woods above the river
Long before anyone spoke of Hudson County, these hills were
Hackensack territory — a people of the Lenape, who kept a
settlement called Espatingh on the west side of the hills. In
1658, Peter Stuyvesant, Director-General of New Netherland,
repurchased from the Lenape the land east of the Hackensack River
that is now Hudson County — a deal later immortalized in a New
Deal post office mural,
Purchase of Territory of North Bergen from the Indians. Two
years later he authorized the semi-autonomous colony of Bergen,
seated at today's Bergen Square in Jersey City — often cited as
the first chartered municipality in what became New Jersey.
Our end of that colony was the wild end: heavily forested high
country called the Bergen Woods, a name that survives every time
someone says "Bergenwood." After the 1664 English takeover came
the Province of New Jersey; Bergen County was formed in 1682 and
divided in 1693, our peninsula becoming Bergen Township.
Settlement stayed sparse — clusters along the Bergen Turnpike at
Three Pigeons and Maisland, later New Durham — while Bulls Ferry
on the Hudson became an important landing for crossings to
Manhattan. During the Revolution, these heights saw American
foraging and raiding, including the Battle of Bull's Ferry.
Born big, whittled small
Hudson County was created in 1840, and on April 10, 1843, the New
Jersey Legislature carved the northern portion of old Bergen
Township into a new township: North Bergen. The newborn was
enormous: everything east of the Hackensack River and north of
today's Journal Square, Jersey City Heights included.
It didn't stay enormous. Then came a slow-motion breakup that
created nearly every town we now border. Hoboken Township went
first, in 1849; Hudson Town — later Hudson City — split off in the
1850s. Guttenberg was formed within the township in 1859 and won
full independence in 1878; Weehawken left in 1859; Union Township
and West Hoboken Township broke away in 1861, Union Hill in 1864,
and Secaucus finally departed in 1900. Each secession trimmed
another piece, until what remained was the inverted "L" — the axe.
Beer, marksmen, and the Big Four
The late 19th century remade North Hudson in a German accent. In
the early 1870s — sources cite 1872 or 1874 — immigrants founded
Schuetzen Park, a German-American shooting-club and social grounds
along today's Kennedy Boulevard corridor, named for the
Schützen, the riflemen. Its pavilions, music, and shooting
ranges anchored a Volksfest tradition kept alive for generations,
and German-speaking immigrants stitched the region into a new
identity: by the early 1900s North Hudson was the "Embroidery
Capital of America," with later Irish, Slavic, Jewish, Middle
Eastern, and Italian waves following.
The era's loudest legacy, though, wore a disguise. Nungesser's
Guttenberg Racetrack — "the Gut" — actually operated on land that
is now the Racetrack Section of North Bergen, roughly 81st to 91st
Streets between Bergenline and Kennedy Boulevard, despite the
Guttenberg name. This was no county-fair pony ring: year-round
racing, large purses, heated glass-fronted grandstands, dozens of
bookmakers. The operators, remembered as "the Big Four,"
reportedly took in about $5,000 a day, and weekend crowds could
swell to 12,000. New Jersey outlawed gaming in 1893, ending the
party at a stroke; the grounds lived on as a roadhouse and a
proving ground for early automobiles and airplanes. The
grandstands are gone, but the map kept the receipt: the
neighborhood is still called Racetrack, and the junction at the
county line with Fairview is still called Nungessers.
Boulevards, streetcars, and a new language
The 20th century gave the town its skeleton. Hudson County
Boulevard — today's Kennedy Boulevard and Boulevard East — was
completed in the early 1900s and already prized for "motoring" by
1913. Bergenline Avenue carried North Hudson County Railway
streetcars up to Nungesser's and grew into the region's commercial
spine; even its name is a fossil of the 1843 "Bergen Line"
boundary survey. North Hudson Park opened in 1910.
Then came the wave that made the modern town. Beginning in the
1960s, Cuban émigrés — and after them families from across Latin
America — reshaped North Hudson. The nickname "Havana on the
Hudson" belongs most tightly to Union City and West New York, but
the same tide flowed into North Bergen, which, unlike some
neighbors, grew substantially: from 48,414 people in 1990 to
63,361 in 2020. Bergenline became "La Avenida." By 1981 the avenue
was predominantly Cuban; today Dominican, Mexican, Colombian,
Peruvian, Ecuadorian, and Salvadoran storefronts layer over that
foundation, and recent political coverage describes the township
as roughly 71 percent Hispanic. The town changed its language
without changing its nature: dense, working, always on its way
somewhere.
The Cinderella Man of the Palisades
Every town claims a hero. Ours is genuine — with one correction,
because the truth beats the myth. James Walter Braddock was
not born in North Bergen, whatever some social-media
tributes say. He was born June 7, 1905, in Hell's Kitchen,
Manhattan, on West 48th Street. What matters is what came next:
his family moved to North Bergen when he was a schoolboy, and this
is the town that raised him. He grew up at 7712 Park Avenue, lived
and trained here much of his life, and after his 1937 fight with
Joe Louis he bought a home in town for about $14,000. He died at
his North Bergen home on November 29, 1974.
In between, he reigned as world heavyweight champion from 1935 to
1937 and became the defining underdog story of the Depression — a
comeback so improbable that the 2005 film with Russell Crowe
simply called him Cinderella Man. North Bergen returned the
affection: North Hudson Park was renamed James J. Braddock North
Hudson County Park, and in September 2018 a 10-foot bronze statue
by sculptor Zenos Frudakis was unveiled there, near the ground
where he lived and trained. A fighter from somewhere else, made by
this town — which is the most North Bergen story there is.
Five things you can still see today
-
Braddock Park and the statue. Nearly 167 acres
around Woodcliff Lake, established 1910 — with the 10-foot
Cinderella Man in bronze near where he trained.
-
The Racetrack Section. The 80s streets between
Bergenline and Kennedy still carry the Gut's name.
-
Nungessers. The junction at the Fairview county
line preserves the racetrack proprietor's name — now a busy bus
crossroads.
-
Boulevard East. The early motorists' boulevard
still delivers its payoff: the Palisades crest and a panoramic
Manhattan skyline.
-
Bergenline — La Avenida. New Jersey's longest
commercial avenue, where the streetcar spine of 1900 now speaks
Spanish at 300-plus storefronts.
By The Beat's history desk, with the North Bergen
Historical Society's postcard files in spirit
Sources: Wikipedia's North Bergen/Bergenline/Nungessers/Braddock
entries; NYT (1996, 2000); northbergen.org; Hudson County Parks;
NB Historical Society. Linked in footer.
