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.
