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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
Hackensack's industrial life is chiefly the manufacture of bricks, cement, slippers, and haberdashery. Low wages, especially for women workers, prevail in the clothing factories. Along the river, navigable only to Hackensack, is the sole industrial scene in the city; here are brickyards, a battery of oil tanks, a stone crusher plant, and warehouses with long lines of rumbling motor trucks and heavy barges. Southeast from the city spread the Hackensack meadows, a tidal flat covered with marsh grass. A crisscross of ditches has been dug by governmental agencies to check mosquito breeding.
In the residential sections the town has preserved an atmosphere of age and tradition. Streets here bear the names of New Jersey counties, Essex, Union, Passaic, etc., and those of pioneer families whose descendants are still active in the community, Zabriskie, Banta, and Hopper. Summit Avenue, a broad, tree-lined street, represents the long-established citizens with rows of large late-Victorian mansions surrounded by ample greenery. Gradually these homes yield to a newer section distinguished by a more frequent use of brick and granite and the styling of the 1920's. Down along the hill, upon which the better homes stand, sprinklings of modern adaptations of Colonial, English, and Norman styles mix with typical frame suburban dwellings and survivals of old Hackensack. Throughout the town at random points there are many authentic Dutch Colonial homes, sturdy reminders of the original citizenry. Hackensack is a genealogist's paradise where research flourishes.
The city's foreign-born population of 20.5 percent is largely concentrated in the area west of Hudson Street and south of Essex Street. It is almost a separate community, with a dominant population of Italians and a much smaller percentage of Poles. Most of the foreign-born work for public utilities, trucking firms, or contractors and live mainly in a typical Hackensack miscellany of old frame houses, recent bungalows, and an occasional brick structure.
The most sharply defined racial colony in Hackensack is the Negro section of about five blocks along First Street between Berry Street and Central Avenue. Although old wooden houses in varying states of repair give the
area a more residential appearance than the average Negro urban section,j dwellings are excessively crowded, with two and three families often living in a one-family house. The one school is attended almost exclusively by Negro children with teachers of both white and black races. Many of the 2,530 Negroes are active in the movement to better their economic position through political action, and have won recognition to the extent of three Negro appointments to the local police force.
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