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 outbreak of the Civil War seriously threatened a large intersectional trade which Newark had established with the South. As an offset, however, to the manufacturers' fears, the war boomed industry; hat and shoe factories operated at full capacity to fill army orders and a general prosperity was enjoyed. A visit from Abraham Lincoln en route to his first Washington inaugural helped to solidify community sentiment. Newark sent 10,000 to the Union armies.

Modern Newark dates from the close of the Civil War. An industrial exposition in 1872 showed that the city was becoming more and more diversified in its manufacturing interests, although brewing, jewelry, and leather still maintained the lead. But while these industries were at their peak, the scientific age was beginning to transform completely the city's industrial character. In 1869 John Wesley Hyatt invented celluloid and laid the basis for the important plastic industry. Eighteen years later the Rev. Hannibal Goodwin developed a process which later turned celluloid into film for photographic negatives. Thomas A. Edison's invention of the electric light bulb in nearby Menlo Park was responsible for the rise of a new industry in Newark. Later Edward Weston carried on the Edison tradition with many important electrical inventions.

The post-Civil War period was marked also by the city's finest literary flowering. Stephen Crane (1871-1900), the novelist, was its greatest literary figure. His contemporary, Mary Mapes Dodge (1838-1905), created the children's classic, , and Edmund Clarence Stedman (1833-1908), banker-poet-editor, conducted literary salons in and around Newark for a decade. Richard Watson Gilder 18 1909), editor of the Century, worked for a time after the Civil War on the old Newark Advertiser and with Newton Crane founded the Newark . Noah Brooks (1830-1903), well known at the end of the last century as a journalist and author of books for boys, was editor of the Newark Daily Advertiser in 1884.

By the turn of the century the newer, electrified industries were crowding out the old steam crafts and preparing Newark for its future leadership in heavy, mass industrial enterprise. Municipal government under Mayor Joseph Haynes aided the upswing with improved water facilities, new buildings and sincere efforts to harmonize the interests of industry and the city. Similarly, the once independent unions contributed toward stabilization by consolidation into the American Federation of Labor. The World War heightened Newark's position as an industrial center and laid the foundation for its future as a port. While factories worked on 24-hour schedules, the Federal Government developed struggling Port Newark into an army base and prepared it for major shipping operations. The citizenry invested nearly $200,000,000 in Liberty Bonds and sent more than 20,000 men into the fighting service.

Post-war prosperity made Newark more than ever the hub of northern New Jersey. Apartment houses in the residential districts and skyscrapers on Broad Street gave the city a metropolitan appearance. Airplanes replaced the earlier mosquitoes in flights over the old Newark meadows, and in 1929 the airport was designated the eastern air mail terminal. In 1935 a city subway, built in the bed of the Morris Canal, and a new Pennsylvania Railroad station were opened to modernize the city's transport system. By 1938 all trolley cars had been eliminated on downtown surface lines.

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