A History of the city of Newark, New Jersey : embracing practically two and a half centuries, 1666-1913, Volume I, Part 45

Author: Urquhart, Frank J. (Frank John), 1865- 4n; Lewis Historical Publishing Company. 4n
Publication date: 1913
Publisher: New York, N.Y. ; Chicago, Ill. : The Lewis Historical Publishing Co.
Number of Pages: 1186


USA > New Jersey > Essex County > Newark > A History of the city of Newark, New Jersey : embracing practically two and a half centuries, 1666-1913, Volume I > Part 45


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The stage coaches played sad havoc with Broad street. They wore great ridges and gullies in the soft earth, and when the storms came the thoroughfare was little short of impassable.


BROAD STREET A MUDHOLE, 1832.


"Many a time and oft," says a writer in the Centinel for December 18, 1832, "have I witnessed some luckless wight of a pedestrian risk his precious life, and e'en my own has been sorely jeoparded in a vain attempt to ford Broad street in a storm. One might as well attempt to swim the Black Sea or cross the Missis- sippi on a streak of lightning. Not that the water is so very deep or the current so very strong; but there is mud-mud so deep and flexible-a liquid paradise for city scavengers, alias swine, to luxuriate in-said to be the best place in the world for a grazing park. And I do think our worthy town authorities show a becom- ing disposition to reap the full advantages of it. Now, after the present stock of pork is fully gathered in, I should recommend that a subscription be set on foot to raise money for paving some of the principal streets, say, Broad street, from the half-way house to Elizabethtown, and Market street, from the river to Orange. There need be no want of paving stones, for there are shells enough in Market street alone for the purpose."


There were a number of oyster saloons on Market street at that time and the proprietors dumped the shells in the street.


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Indeed, all storekeepers and other residents had, in those days, not the slightest compunction to disposing of their refuse in this fashion.


The pigs wandered apparently at will about the streets of the town and Military and Washington Parks were their favorite root- ing ground. In 1833 a writer to the Centinel complains of the habit "of some citizens of letting their horses loose in the public streets at night, and on the Sabbath, by which means our sidewalks are often obstructed and children in danger."


A RETURNED NEWARKER'S LAMENT, 1834.


No enactment by the Town Committee, nor any high-minded appeal by a group of its really publie-spirited citizens could eradicate the spirit of personal greed from some of the townspeople-which applies quite forcefully to all communities of human beings on the face of the earth. "After an absence of fifteen years," wrote some- one to the Daily Advertiser, in May, 1834, "I am again in my native town. On reviewing the place and comparing it to what it was when I left it, I feel emotions both of joy and sorrow arising in my breast. The numerous streets, spires and wharves, proclaim that the population and commerce have spread further and wider, and the hum of business declares that the march of improvement has not yet ceased. Among the most prominent features of improve- ment which I notice are the canal, a number of churches, splendid rows of brick stores and dwellings, a railroad being constructed, a daily newspaper and a semi-daily communication by land and water with New York; all of which have arisen since I was an inhabitant of Newark.


"Yet with all these I do not feel so much gratified as if I had found it in the same condition as I left it. To be sure, there stands the same church and there runs the same river, but yet I cannot realize it as my home. The time was when I could call every inhabitant of the town by name, but now I can walk half a mile in the principal street and every face I meet is a stranger.


"Like the great city, it has its haunts of dissipation which have served in a great measure to destroy that innocence and simple beauty which once characterized it.


BROAD STREET. LOOKING SOUTH FROM MARKET, ABOUT 1825 From an old copper plale


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"I have now been here a month, which is long enough to observe the distinguishing traits of character of any town's inhabit- ants, and although I feel a reluctance to do it, I must say there is a want of public spirit in it. I do not mean a want of enterprise, but there is not enough of care for the general appearance and condi- tion of the town except as far as individual interest is concerned.


"Many opportunities offer for beautifying and improving the appearance of the place which are slighted. The condition of the roads is bad, the public houses are not of that class which might be expected and numerous other matters of a public nature are not satisfactorily attended to.


"The only way of accounting for this, that I know, is by reckoning the majority of business men as natives of other towns. I have been a resident of several different towns during my absence and have uniformly noticed a degree of public spirit exceeding that of Newark in proportion to their different sizes and number of inhabitants. But it is to be hoped that this will not always be the case, but that some men of influence may yet arise who will sacrifice a little for the general welfare and hold a reflection of disgrace on the appearance of their town in the same light as on themselves. "S. F."


THE FIRST PAVEMENTS.


The sidewalks in the principal streets of Newark were laid down many years before street paving was done. Broad street and Market as well had flagstone sidewalks as early as 1820. It was proposed to pave Broad street, from the apex of Military Park for several blocks southward, as early as 1833, but this was not done. The first street pavement of which there is any record was laid in 1853, in Academy street, from Broad street to Plane. Broad street, from Clinton avenue to Clay street, and Market street, from the Market street plaza, in front of the Pennsylvania Railroad sta- tion, were paved the same year or a little later. There is a tradition that Broad street was paved with planks, originally, but no definite record of this is to be found. Another old story is that Park place, from the apex of Military Park to what is now Saybrook place, was paved with broad, flat stones, in the 1840's or thereabouts, but there is nothing in the old records to substantiate this.


The visit of the Hungarian patriot, Louis Kossuth, in 1852, (which is described in one of the chapters devoted to the Germans


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in Newark) may have helped on the street paving crusade. Broad street was nothing but mud and water, and Kossuth had to be transported in a stone boat, drawn by horses.


The first sewer in the city was the one discharging at Ballan- tine's brewery and running up Rector street.


NUMBERING THE STREETS, 1834.


The first numbering of Newark streets occurred in 1834. This innovation is chronicled in the Newark Daily Advertiser for April 9, 1834, as follows: "We learn with pleasure, as we have no doubt our citizens generally will, that Mr. Jonathan Reynolds of Halsey street proposes on Monday to enter upon the task of numbering the houses of the town. The town is now so large"-it had about 17,000 inhabitants-"that it would be a great convenience to have a number on every house. The cost would not be over 10 cents a number." These street numbers were in use by June of the same year. The numbers on Broad street began at Clay street and con- tinued to what is now South Park. Later, as the town grew, a new numbering was made, which, so far as Broad street is concerned, is the present system. As for the streets other than Market and Broad, they were numbered as the need for it occurred.


Many of Newark's most important streets were nothing but lanes when the city charter was granted in 1836. Mulberry street, known from the times of the settlers, almost, as the "East Back street," got its present name somewhere about 1800, when the town was much aroused over the possibilities of silkworm culture, and when many mulberry trees were set out. Fair street was so called as early as 1800. Hill street got its name about the same time, being previously known as "Hockabony lane." Walnut street was known as such as early as 1797. Orange street does not seem to have been commonly called by that name much before 1809. New street was so known in 1808. Washington street, the original "West Back street," had its present name in 1807, possibly earlier. A part of Halsey street has had its present name since 1808.


In 1838 what is now known as East Park street was Smith


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street, to Mulberry street. From the latter street to Cherry street it was known as Park place. At that time, also, South Park was triangular in shape as now, but the width at the base of the triangle, along Clinton avenue, was only about half the width to Halsey street. Marshall street was then Wheeler's alley. Halsey street then started from Washington Park and stopped at Academy. It was not opened to Market street until about 1871. From Market street what is now Halsey street, running south, of course, was then (1838) Harrison street. From what is now Clinton avenue, but was in 1838 West Broad street, the present Halsey street was Church street for a considerable distance northward. Central ave- nue was cut through to Broad street from Washington about 1867. The present Belleville avenue was the original road northward to what is now Belleville and beyond. North Broad street was built, from the Belleville avenue junction to Clark street (then Parker), a short time prior to 1855; from Clark street half-way between Gouverneur, in 1857; from there to Harvey street in 1868.


REMINISCENCES OF CENTRE STREET.


Centre street was once little more than a ditch for carrying off surface water from Military Park, if we are to believe the late Wil- liam C. Wallace, who, in 1889, set down his reminiscences of the first two or three decades of the nineteenth century. He wrote:


"We were not cultivated then up to the name of parks. We had the upper [Washington Park] and lower [Military Park] Com- mons, and I have seen them pastured with cows and sheep, and sometimes the swine tribe would be seen cultivating them with their natural ploughshares. The southern Common [Military Park] after rain was almost entirely inundated, its level being so much lower than the surrounding grounds. Centre street level was much higher, and yet this seemed to be the only proper direction to con- duct the water down to the river. To free the town from this and other occasional overflows, interested one gentleman very much, and I have often seen him with hoe in hand, especially after rains, going about and examining the levels by the water, and by this kind of survey determining approximately by which course the water should be carried off."


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It appears, although Mr. Wallace does not make it entirely clear, that Centre street was actually cut through the bluff-top to permit the water to flow into the river:


"At length Colonel Hassler (I think his name was), appointed by Government to make the coast survey, made an encampment and headquarters in one of the brick houses at the head of the Town Common with a corps of young men, and an ark of a carriage capable of containing all their surveying tools. * * I do not know by whom or at whose expense the excavations and work were afterward done, but as a boy and young man I witnessed much of the above."


OPENING OF THE MORRIS CANAL, 1832.


The Morris Canal was a powerful factor in promoting New- ark's prosperity and in stimulating street and road development. The agitation for its construction began in the early 1820's. In 1824 the Legislature authorized the building of the canal from the Delaware, near Easton, to the Passaic, near the present city of that name. The canal company was empowered to raise $1,000,000 in capital stock and to increase this by half a million, if this sum should be found necessary to complete the work. In 1828 the canal company was authorized to extend the canal to Jersey City. The enterprise was not fully financed until 1830, when a loan of $5,200,- 000 was assured from capitalists in Holland. This sum offered was more than five times that asked for. As a consequence, the canal stock immediately jumped to eighty-five points above par. The "ditch" was completed from the Delaware to Newark (the route as it approached this section having been diverted from the Ac- quackanonck region) in 1832, and immediately put in operation. One of the great problems in connection with the enterprise was whether canal locks or an inclined plane should be used for high grades. George P. McCulloch, of Morristown, is understood to have been the originator of the inclined plane idea. "Such planes," said one writer of the time, "had never before been applied to boats of such magnitude, nor an operation so extensive."


The actual cost of the canal, from Philipsburg to Newark, was about $2,000,000, instead of $817,000, as originally esti-


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mated. The cost of construction from Newark to Jersey City was figured at $100,000, but this proved very much too low. This last section was not put into commission until 1836, the year the city charter was granted. The total length of the canal is one hundred and one miles, over a circuitous route. It has a total rise and fall of 1,674 feet.


"The first boat to reach tide waters," says Shaw's History of Essex and Hudson Counties, "was the 'Walk in the Water,' with a consignment to Stephens & Condit. This was on the 19th or 20th day of May, 1832. The arrival of two canal boats from Mauch Chunk, laden with Lehigh coal, was hailed with pleasure by the Newark newspapers, and the announcement was made that fif- teen or twenty more boats laden with coal were on their way. The citizens were recommended, as a measure of prudence and economy, to "provide themselves with this indispensable article at an early period and not defer it till setting in of the winter." From fifteen to twenty boats arrived daily with coal, wood, iron ore and country produce, and carrying back merchandise, raw materials and other articles used in manufacturing establishments on the line of the canal, causing a brisk business during the spring and summer. The advantages to Newark and the whole country through which the canal passed were already manifest in the activity and enterprise which everywhere pervaded it-in the reduction in the price of fuel and other necessaries of life, and in the great increase in the value of real estate along the borders of the canal."


This waterway continued of the highest use to the Newark neighborhood for a full generation after its opening, although, toward the end of that period the railroads had begun to rob it of its supremacy as a coal and general freight-carrying utility. The canal really made the burning of hard coal a possibility here (the way to produce combustion having been perfected). William C. Wallace in his reminiscences, written in 1889, said:


THE COMING OF HARD COAL.


"In the early part of the 'last' century, Newark was odorous with turf smoke, there being turf meadows with their drying


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houses near Newark, convenient to the Camptown (now Irvington) road, and to those who owned turf lots, this was the cheapest fuel, wood lots being owned very generally by householders and man- aged with economy. Previous to the discovery of the anthracite coal mines in Pennsylvania, there was great anxiety among thought- ful men about fuel-how long the forests convenient to Newark would last-and they began to calculate and to consider what was to be done. I have heard the question agitated among old gentle- men around my father's fireside of blazing hickory, what was to be done when their wood lots around Newark were exhausted. * * *


"But for years" after the discovery of anthracite "there was no more benefit derived than from black stones, as there was no known method by which combustion could be produced. The fire- places, grates and stoves then in use could make no impression because their drafts were insufficient. Scientific analysis pointed out the valuable qualities, but the Philadelphia owners of the mines, by persuasion and rewards, summoned all the ingenuity of the country for contrivances to make draft sufficient to produce com- bustion. Contracted chimney throats and grate blowers date from that period. Previous to this entry stoves and furnaces were unknown; hence the reason why fine houses had low ceilings- more easily warmed." *


Canal boats for passenger service were for a long time in use. There was a packet boat in the 1830's, the "Maria Colden," that made daily trips (Sundays excepted) between Newark and Passaic. The fare each way was fifty cents, and between Newark and Bloom- field twenty-five. It was a favorite trip for excursionists.


During the year ending with September 13, 1834, 20,000 tons of merchandise were moved over the canal in 1,085 boatloads.


FROM PERIAUGER TO STEAMBOAT.


The settlers made good use of Newark's water transportation facilities to and from New York, and the periaugers dotted the Passaic, Newark Bay and the Arthur Kull in all but the most inclement weather for upwards of a hundred and fifty years. They gave way in the first two or three decades of the last century to the steamboats, and these, in turn, grew gradually fewer in number as the railroads throve. For upwards of three-quarters of a cen- tury, from their establishment in New Jersey until almost the very opening of the present century, the railroads seemed to sys-


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tematically discourage water traffic in this region. Then, finding that they had more business than they could handle with celerity, this attitude of opposition began to disappear.


As early as 1818, Messrs. Stephens, Condit and Cox set up a line of freight boats, consisting of sloops and schooners. There were extensive shipyards at Belleville and on the opposite bank further up-stream. As early as 1798, a steamboat sixty feet long and equipped with an engine of twenty-inch cylinder and two-foot stroke, and called the "Polacca," is believed to have been constructed at Belleville. On October 21 of that same year this craft started on her trial trip upon the Passaic, but it was not a success. Thus ended her brief history, several years before Robert Fulton's "Cler- mont" astounded the dwellers along the Hudson. The inventor and constructor of this half-mythical "Polacca" is said to have been a man of the name of Roosevelt, but the traditions of Belleville refuse to give forth this Roosevelt's christened name or his family con- nections.


The first passenger steamboat to run regularly from Newark to New York was the "Newark," in the early 1830's. This and subsequent boats made Sunday trips, for many years before the railroads gave such service, and the vessels did a most extensive business on that day of the week. The steamboat "Passaic" was in commission as early as 1836, and is said to have carried as many as 3,500 persons to New York or Coney Island in the 1840's, in one day. The "May Queen" ran between Newark and New York from 1855 to 1858, as an excursion boat to New York and to Coney Island. One of the early passenger boats was the "Olive Branch" running between Newark and New York for one season, that of 1838. There followed a long succession of steam passenger boats running from Belleville and Newark to New York.


THE WHALERS, 1837.


Newark was made a port of entry in 1834. About 1836 ware- houses for the reception of sperm oil and whalebone were built near the Centre street docks, and casks for the storing of the oil


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were made there by the Stephens, Condit & Wright Whaling and Sealing Company. This company fitted out, at the docks just men- tioned, the ships "John Wells" and the "Columbus" as first-class whalers. Each carried a crew of about thirty. They started on their first cruise in the summer of 1837, rounded Cape Horn and were quite successful, in the Pacific. But their skippers were not altogether satisfied and they fared northward into the Arctic ocean. There the "Columbus" was wrecked and her crew trans- ferred to the "John Wells," which reached the dock in Newark twenty-three months from the time she started out, and with three thousand barrels of oil and a large quantity of whalebone. The "John Wells" made three subsequent voyages to Arctic waters. This seems to have been the end of Newark's whaling industry.


One of the members of the "John Wells" crew was a boy, Michael Nerney, who later became a New Jersey pilot of marked efficiency. He was one of the very first to realize the great need of lighthouses in Newark Bay and at Bergen Point. He aroused public sentiment. He called upon a Congressman from Jersey City, Dud- ley S. Gregory, for assistance, and in 1847 money was appropriated for the erection of the two lighthouses at the points just men- tioned. Both houses were lighted for the first time on September 20, 1849. Captain Nerney was made keeper for the Newark Bay light, and held that post for twenty-one years. He kept a record of the vessels that passed his light and found that as many as three hundred sometimes passed in a single day.


In April, 1862, the Stephens & Condit Transportation Com- pany was organized, out of the original concern, absorbing the Thomas V. Johnson towing and freighting line, which for years had done business at Commercial Dock. At the time this new com- pany was established its steamboats were the "Thomas P. Way," "Chicopee" and "Jamaica." It afterwards added the "Maryland," "Jonas C. Heartt," "Maria" and "Magenta." The last mentioned, with the "Thomas P. Way" and the "Maryland," were chartered by the Federal Government during the Civil War for the transporta- tion of troops. The last two were practically rebuilt afterwards


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and remained in commission until near the close of the last cen- tury. The "Thomas P. Way" was burned, July 20, 1888. The "Magenta" was finally converted into a ferry boat.


NEWARK COMMERCE IN 1833.


"The commerce of Newark," said Gordon's Gazeteer in 1833, "already considerable, rapidly increases. It employs 65 vessels, averaging 100 tons, in the coasting trade; eight or nine of which are constantly engaged in transporting hither various building materials. The Morris Canal, which runs through the town, gives it many advantages for internal trade, for which twenty-five canal boats are supplied by the inhabitants. The facilities for com- munication with New York render the town a suburb of that great city. A steamboat plies twice a day between the two places, carry- ing an average of 75 passengers each trip, each way; two lines of stages communicate between them almost hourly, conveying at least 800 passengers a week; and the communication will be still more frequent and facile when the New Jersey Railroad, now rapidly progressing, shall have been completed. The directors have not only run the railroad through part of the town, but have opened a splendid avenue of 120 feet wide, by its side [the present New Jersey Railroad avenue], and propose to cross the Passaic River about the centre of the town, upon a wooden bridge on stone abut- ments, which will give an additional trait of beauty to the place." The avenue, by the way, had a highly stimulating influence upon real estate in its neighborhood. New streets were opened rapidly.


A BURYING GROUND EPISODE.


In 1828 the Township of Newark, after long deliberation, bought a plot of nearly nine acres east of New Jersey Railroad ave- nue and south of Ferry street, for a "New Burying Place," to be used in place of the Old Burying Ground, which it had been decided in 1826 must no longer be used for the interment of bodies. The sum of $641.27 was paid for the new cemetery property, but it speedily became too valuable for burial purposes, as the building


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of the railroad proceeded, and was cut up into building lots in 1835, and sold. Very few interments were made there. In the early 1830's the town of Newark was indicted for maintaining a nuisance in the Old Burying Ground, and steps had to be taken to draw off the water that continually gathered there. Little regard for the tombs of the town's founders was shown in those days, and it is not altogether pleasant to note that when a new burying ground was necessary a plot of low, cheap land, below the present Pennsylvania Railroad, was purchased.


NEWARK'S FIRST RAILROAD.


The first railroad to enter Newark was that of the New Jersey Railroad and Transportation Company. It received its charter on March 7, 1832, from the New Jersey Legislature, and the act of incorporation permitted it to issue capital stock to the amount of $775,000, with liberty to double that amount. The books for stock subscriptions were opened for three days, the first day at New Brunswick, the second at Elizabeth and the third at Newark. It was at first proposed to cross the river "contiguous to" the Bridge street bridge, but the bridge company was hostile, and would not make any arrangement whatsoever with the railroad. The railroad company's first officers, General John S. Darcy, of Morris County, president, and John P. Jackson, of Newark, secretary, were chosen here in Newark on March 22, 1832. When the three days for stock subscription were over it was found that a considerable sur- plus had been taken, and that the subscribers were almost wholly Jerseymen. Thus was the railroad out of which the present Penn- sylvania was to be partly built, inaugurated.




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