Newark travel guide — Newark tourism and travel information

Newark travel guide

about Newark

Newark, the "Brick City," is located in Essex County, New Jersey, USA. As of the 2000 census, the city had a total population of 273,546. It is an industrial city ten miles (16 km) west of New York City, with convenient access to New York by road and rail. Its location on the Atlantic coast, at the mouth of the Passaic River, 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), the first airport to serve the New York metropolitan area.

The City of Newark is presently governed under the Faulkner Act (Mayor-Council) system of municipal government.

Newark geography

Newark is located at 40°44'7" North, 74°11'6" West (40.735201, -74.184938).

According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 67.2 km² (26.0 mi²). 61.6 km² (23.8 mi²) of it is land and 5.6 km² (2.2 mi²) of it is water. The total area is 8.36% water.

Newark history

Newark was founded in 1666 by Connecticut Puritans led by Robert Treat, making it the third-oldest major city in the United States, though 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 village in England from where some of the original settlers arrived.

Newark was a relatively large town in the colonial era, known for its good beers, 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 US 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'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 Morris 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.

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.

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 but Hartford.

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" (quoted in Crabgrass Frontier, 275).

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."

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 26th 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 forty 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.

Post-WWII Era

But, underneath the industrial hum, problems existed. In 1930, a City Commissioner had told a local booster club, the Optimists,

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 Sunbelt or the GI Bill, planners saw problems on Newark's horizon.

Some attribute Newark's downfall to building so many housing projects, but Newark always had bad housing. 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, almost all being occupied by African-Americans. Clearly, bad housing predated government intervention in the housing market.

One theory, postulated by Kenneth Jackson and others, was that Newark, and other northern cities, had always had a situation where a poor center was surrounded by middle-class outlying areas. Newark 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.

Although numerous problems predated World War II, Newark was indeed hamstrung by a number of trends in the post-WWII era. The FHA (Federal Housing Administration) redlined virtually all of Newark, preferring to back up mortgages in the 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 and 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 by allowing middle class people to live elsewhere.

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-Newark and Seton Hall expanded their Newark presences, with the former building a brand-new campus on a 23 acre 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 nation.

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 North Ward was one of the hardest hit by urban renewal. A 46 acre 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)

As pesticides and mechanization reduced the need for cheap labor in the South, 5 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 non-white, a faster turnover than most other northern cities experienced.

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. Political power also lagged numbers for Newark's black community. 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 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."

Newark saw a continued decline in the 1970s and 1980s. Whites continued to move out of the city, middle class blacks follwed suit, and African-Americans and Puerto Ricans remaining in the city became poorer and more socially isolated. Whenever the media of New York needed to find some example of urban despair, they traveled to Newark. In American Pastoral, Philip Roth puts into the mouth of his protagonist, Swede Levov, "[Newark] used to be the city where they manufactured everything,

A 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:

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.

Also, in terms of music, Newark has had a successful post-War era.

From 1947 until the mid-1990s, Herman Lubinsky's influential Jazz label, Savoy Records, was located at 58 Market Street in downtown Newark.

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, 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. (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.

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. In the 1990's, Newark's population drop was the smallest 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.

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.

Near cities to Newark

• Jersey City travel guide 7.0 km
• Elizabeth travel guide 8.5 km
• Passaic travel guide 13 km
• New York travel guide 14 km
• Hackensack travel guide 19 km
• Paterson travel guide 20 km
• Yonkers travel guide 32 km
• Mount Vernon travel guide 35 km
• New Rochelle travel guide 38 km
• White Plains travel guide 47 km

Near webcams to Newark

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