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Originally published in 1939
Some of this information may no longer be current and in that case is presented for historical interest only.
Edited by GET NJ, COPYRIGHT 2003
The majority of the more than 22,500 foreign-born live on the eastern edge of the city in small frame structures, many with additions that obviously were home-made. Small truck gardens and grape vines in the backyards are a link to agricultural home countries. Poles predominate, with Italians, Russians, Irish, and Czechs following in that order. To many of the police and firemen English is a secondary language, spoken with a heavy foreign accent. Even the children speak with a distinctive inflection.
Prominent in the recreational life of the working population is the Industrial Y.M.C.A., erected with contributions from all the industries of Bayonne. It has a membership of 1,600. The "Y" sponsors, at a small cost to parents, a summer camp in Hunterdon County.
Bayonne is divided in its own estimate of itself. The difference may be illustrated by two examples: trucks of a furniture store carry huge signs which say that Bayonne has the "finest shops" and "the finest school teachers." On the other hand, a newspaper report of a 1936 meeting to protest high taxes and bonded indebtedness was headlined: "WHERE IS BAYONNE GOING? TO THE DOGS, SOME SAY."
Nothing remains in the city to recall its settlement. In March 1646, thirty-seven years after Henry Hudson stopped at the site of Bayonne before his sail up Hudson River, Jacob Jacobsen Roy, a gunner at New Amsterdam, received patent to a tract of land, called after him Konstapel's Hoeck (Dutch, gunner's point). Other grants were not issued until December 1654; a year later shelters were built as centers for Indian trading. Shortly after, the Indians, enraged at the Dutch trading tactics, drove out the settlers. Resettlement was made several years after the Dutch made a treaty with the tribesmen in 1658.
The peninsula was called Constable Hook when the British gained control of it in 1664, and later it became Bergen Neck. Trading shacks and forest gave way to homes and large estates. During the next century, the area became a pleasure center for the socialites of the New World.
Separated as it was from New Jersey's mainland and New York, Bayonne was the scene of only a few unimportant skirmishes during the Revolution. With the War of 1812 came the first industrial plant, the Hazard Powder House, which produced some powder for the Navy and for the forts in New York Bay.
To speed the movement of troops and munitions during the Civil War, the first railroad trestle was built across Newark Bay from Elizabethport, which until 1864 was the railhead.
In 1869 the township, which comprised Constable Hook, Bergen Point, Centerville, and Saltersville, was incorporated as the City of Bayonne with a population of 4,000.
The establishment of the Prentice refinery in 1875 marked the beginning of the city's change. The concern employed 20 men and produced 600 barrels of kerosene daily. The rural atmosphere gave way to increasing industrial clatter as in rapid succession the Standard Oil Company, the Tide Water Oil Company and other refineries, attracted by the natural advantages of the location, moved in. Four docks were constructed to take care of increasing tonnage ; railroad tracks were laid ; and pipe lines were built to bring crude oil directly from Oklahoma and from Illinois. Kerosene was the chief product of the cracking stills, with greases and lubricating oils as byproducts. Pollution from gasoline products, at first generally dumped into the bay, spoiled swimming and fishing.
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