A Library Gets Its Name, and the Machine Keeps Rolling

What Your Government Did While You Were at Work

NORTH BERGEN — The Board of Commissioners meets once in July, and it met Wednesday the 15th at 11 a.m. in the municipal chambers at 4233 Kennedy Boulevard. Here is what was on the table — and, just as important, what we can and cannot confirm about what happened to it.

On the July 15 agenda

Money in. Three budget amendments would insert new state and federal revenue: a $12,365 Byrne Justice Assistance Grant, $29,377.94 from the NJ State Library Capital Projects Fund, and $119,372 from the state Department of Health. Grant chasing is one of this administration's genuine strengths — June's meeting alone inserted more than a dozen revenue items, from $212,827 for public-health infrastructure to $107,052 for the summer food program.

Money out. Payment of claims: $9,415,308.45, authorized in a single line item. Also: $80,000 to amend a contract with Purvin & Purvin; $750 to the ABC Board for a June 30 special meeting; and cancellation of outstanding checks.

The big build. A $2,107,134 contract award to AA Berns LLC for Bergenline Avenue Streetscape Phase II — the construction follow-through on June's $3.08 million Urban Enterprise Zone budget insertion. Bergenline's facelift has been promised for years; this is the money meeting the avenue. We'll be watching the shovels.

The change order. $182,201.51 more for the 85th Street drainage project — Change Order No. 9. Drainage on that corridor matters (ask anyone whose basement has met a Hudson County thunderstorm), but nine change orders is a project that has never quite known its own scope. Worth a public explanation.

The developer agreement. Authorization for an Interim Costs Agreement with JLB Hudson Realty Development Corp. — the same developer whose 5-story, 79-unit plan at 8814 Kennedy Blvd (a former school building) was carried to September 2 by the Zoning Board that same evening. The agenda doesn't say what the agreement obligates. It should.

The appointment. One line: "Appointing a Commissioner to the Housing Authority." The same day, Hudson County View reported that Gov. Sherrill had appointed Jonathan Moya, chief of staff to Assemblyman Larry Wainstein, to the North Bergen Housing Authority board. Whether the board's action and the governor's appointment are the same seat is unconfirmed — see above re: minutes.

Also decided this month

Planning Board, July 7 (results posted promptly — take notes, BOC):

• 25 79th Street — subdividing a vacant lot into three lots, each with a new two-family home: approved with conditions.
• Palisades Medical Center, 7600 River Road — a second wall sign on the River Road side: approved with conditions.
• Memorialized earlier approvals: a mixed-use multifamily conversion with ground-floor retail at 2801–2811 Kennedy Blvd; an outdoor dining deck and basement cigar lounge at 901–933 Kennedy Blvd; a four-family revision at 1526 Union Turnpike; and a two-family subdivision at 221 77th Street.

Zoning Board, July 15 (special meeting): the 79-unit 8814 Kennedy Blvd case — carried to September 2. The regular July 1 zoning session was canceled outright.

The June ledger (for the record)

Because July's meeting is short, June's paperwork tells the bigger story: the CY 2026 budget was adopted June 10; bond ordinances totaling $1.61 million for Smith Avenue, 72nd–78th Street traffic calming, and 6th/9th/10th/Columbia street work were adopted June 24; a workforce housing ordinance passed the same night; and the board consented to the North Bergen Municipal Utilities Authority issuing up to $38 million in obligations while leasing the township's combined sewer system to the authority — a structural move with long ratepayer consequences that received no adversarial coverage anywhere we can find. More on that from our accountability desk below.

The Beat's standing request: post minutes within a week, every week. The agenda is a promise; the minutes are the proof.

By Scoop Palisade, Town Hall Bureau

Sources: northbergen.org meeting portal, agendas and minutes packets (June 10, June 24, July 7, July 15); Hudson County View.

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.