West Bergen-East Lincoln Park Historic District
Jersey City, Hudson County, New Jersey
Hunter Research’s architectural historians conducted a survey of over 570 buildings in the West Bergen-East Lincoln Park neighborhood of Jersey City and then completed the necessary documentation for designation of a historic district at the municipal level and for nomination to the New Jersey and National Registers of Historic Places. The district was listed on the New Jersey Register in December 2014 and received local designation by the Jersey City Historic Preservation Commission, City Planning Board and City Council in 2015. National Register listing was received in July 2016.
The West Bergen-East Lincoln Park Historic District is a residential neighborhood composed primarily of historically upscale middle-class single-family houses and multi-family apartment houses interspersed with a small number of attractive period churches and institutional buildings such as clubhouses, schools and a firehouse. The district lies along the east side of Lincoln Park, a county park that extends from the district westward to the Hackensack River. A formal park entrance, featuring a statue of Abraham Lincoln, called Lincoln the Mystic, by noted sculptor James Earle Fraser, is located off of Kennedy Boulevard within the district. The district’s Dutch colonial history is echoed in the street pattern that follows the outlines of long-and-narrow blocks that were once wood lots, pastures and fields. The vast majority of the district’s historic architectural resources, however, date between 1860 and 1945 with a particular concentration between 1880 and 1920 when this was Jersey City’s most fashionable streetcar suburb and home to many of the city’s political and professional elite.
