I WAS BORN IN HOBOKEN

If you have read my autobiography to this point, you realize that my love of Hoboken is deep and unending. To better understand the appeal this city has for me, please read this posting which contains an exptract of its history I copied from the Hoboken Historical Museum's site, followed by my own personal account of the city. 02/20/2016

I WAS BORN IN HOBOKEN

The following historical account of Hoboken appeared on a website devoted to the city. Hoboken's modern history began when Henry Hudson's navigator made note of the area's green-veined rock during the 1609 voyage up the river that now bears the explorer's name. The men on the ship Half Moon were the first Europeans known to have seen the island. Dutchmen, who visited the future Hoboken in those early years,called it “Hoe buck,” meaning high bluff. Today we call the elevation Castle Point.

The Lenni Lenape camped seasonally in this area. They called the spot 'Hopoghan Hackingh,' or 'Land of the Tobacco Pipe,' for they used the green-colored serpentine rock abundant in the area to carve pipes for smoking tobacco. In 1658 Peter Stuyvesant, Dutch Governor of Manhattan, bought all the land between the Hackensack and the Hudson Rivers from the Lenni Lenape for 80 fathoms of wampum, 20 fathoms of cloth, 12 kettles, 6 guns, 2 blankets, 1 double kettle and half a barrel of beer.

   Subsequently the land came into the possession of William Bayard. Because he chose to be a Loyalist Tory in 1776, the Revolutionary Government of New Jersey confiscated his land. In 1784 Colonel John Stevens, Colonial Treasurer of New Jersey and Patriot bought the island at public auction for 18,360 pounds sterling, then about $90,000. Stevens envisioned this marshy island's possibilities. He settled on the name "Hoboken" and the Stevens family began to be an inseparable part of the city's history.

   Colonel Stevens developed Hoboken as a resort, with the people of New York City his market. As early as 1820, he began transforming the wild but beautiful waterfront into a recreation area. He constructed a riverfront walk and a park space in today's downtown Hoboken. Weekends, the city-to-be accommodated as many as 20,000 New Yorkers out for their Sunday picnics.

   On June 19, 1846, Hoboken played host to the first organized game of baseball. The New York Nine defeated the Knickerbockers, 23 to 1 in four innings at Hoboken's Elysian Fields near the current site of Elysian Park and the former Maxwell House facility.

   Numerous attractions in Hoboken drew celebrities of the time. George Washington was an honorary member of the Turtle Club, which met near the Elysian Fields at Tenth Street. Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr were active members. Charles Dickens wrote about his visit to Hoboken in 1842. John Cox Stevens began America's first yacht club in Hoboken in 1844. Lillian Russell, John L. Sullivan, Jay Gould, and William K. Vanderbilt entertained guests in Hoboken's 'Duke's House' restaurant. Horace Greeley and Henry Ward Beecher patronized Nick's 'Bee Hive,' a lively saloon. John Jacob Astor built a summer home at Washington and Second Streets.

   Colonel Stevens attained fame as an inventor, one considerably ahead of his time. In 1791, he received one of the first patents issued in America, for a steam engine. Thirteen years later his vessel Little Juliana steamed across the Hudson between the Battery and Hoboken. It was the first steamboat driven by twin-screw propellers. In 1808, Colonel Stevens launched the Phoenix, the first steam-driven vessel to make an ocean voyage.

   Colonel Stevens then turned his attention to rail transportation. By 1825, he had designed and built the first experimental steam-driven locomotive in the U.S. and operated it on a circular track in Hoboken. Stevens earlier received the first American railroad charter and designed the T shaped rail, standard to this day on American railroads.

   With this early start and the city's waterfront location opposite New York, Hoboken established itself as a rail and water transportation center. Piers sprouted along the waterfront and Hoboken became a major port for transatlantic shipping lines, including Holland America, North German Lloyd and Hamburg-American. Hoboken's facilities and strategic location made it the choice of the Federal government as the prime port of embarkation for troops of the American Expeditionary Forces in World War I. More than three million soldiers passed through the port, and their hope for an early return led to the slogan, "Heaven, Hell or Hoboken...by Christmas."

   In 1838, shortly before his death, Colonel Stevens created the Hoboken Land & Improvement Company to manage the city's development, and to create standards for erecting Hoboken's buildings. This company created Hoboken's orderly street pattern, and brought a consistency and coherence to its architecture. The City's incorporation date is March 28, 1855.

   Hoboken's rapid growth from 1860 to 1910 and its role as a gateway to America brought many immigrants from Europe to the city. The Germans were the first, and German became a dominant language throughout Hoboken. After World War I, the city's ethnic character changed. Irish, Italians, Yugoslavs, Latinos and Asian Indians followed Germans. Hoboken's ethnic vitality enriches the city's contemporary life.

   Containerization of ship cargo made the city obsolete as a center for shipping. Hoboken's warehouses and lack of vast open spaces could not accommodate the large containers. This sparked a severe economic decline that reached its nadir in the 1970s. However, this preserved the old buildings and streets from the changes that prosperity could have brought in the guise of progress.

   Today, Hoboken is a colorful composite of cultures, each with its festivals, languages, music, businesses and clubs. Hoboken is also home to a large and growing population of individuals identified not by the diverse ethnic tapestry they constitute, but by their education, careers, families and life choices, among them the choice of making Hoboken an enriching part of their lives.

My Personal History of Hoboken

My personal history of Hoboken begins with a song:

   Oh, I was born in Hoboken, H-O-B-O-K-E-N.

   Where the girls are the fairest, the boys are the squarest,

   Of any old town I've been in.

   Oh, I was born in Hoboken, down where the Hudson flows.

   In all kinds of weather you'll find us together,

   In H-O-B-O-K-E-N.

While attending Stevens Institute of Technology, I used to sing this song at fraternity parties. Soon everyone would join in. It’s a pity Sinatra did not record it.

Comedians loved to poke fun at Hoboken, in an endearing sort of way. Despite having many wonderful attributes, Hoboken's blue-collar residents did not always admire or appreciate them. Only in the late '70s and early '80s did New Yorkers finally begin to value the practicality of living there. Yuppies bought up all the old brownstone houses, refurbished them, and helped rejuvenate the city. I could hardly believe my eyes when visiting Hoboken in 2003. The city had restored many buildings, returning them to their original beautiful appearance.

   I lived in a number of tenement apartment buildings while growing up, but spent most of my years at 825 Washington Street, the main thoroughfare. Apartment buildings occupied every lot on the east side of the street, save for the Masonic Club building located on the corner of Ninth Street. The west side had a number of stores located at street level below the apartments. In the middle of the block stood two empty lots which remained open and undeveloped save for two billboards. It was regrettable that the grounds behind the billboards became littered with debris. The city should have converted it to a park.

   All the essentials needed for survival in an urban setting could be found within a block’s walk. On the corner of Eighth Street was a saloon. A few doors away were a delicatessen, a bakery, and a candy/tobacco/newspaper store. At the other end of the street a shoe repair shop, another deli, a vegetable store, and a butcher. On the block between Seventh and Eighth Streets were a liquor store, a pharmacist, a hardware store, a woman’s clothing store, and a soda fountain owned by Mr. Shortmeier. He made soft vanilla ice cream and may have invented it. On Sundays, and sometimes after school, my sister would treat me to a chocolate syrup covered scoop of soft vanilla ice cream, served in a small glass cup on a paper doily. When he died, Mr. Shortmeier took the secret of how he made his soft ice cream with him. I keep searching and trying, but never found anything that compared to the taste and flavor he achieved. The quest goes on, however.

   The Abel brothers acquired his business. They changed the decor, installed new booths with jukebox song selectors at each table, and made it into the quintessential teen-age hangout of my high school crowd. We always went there after attending a dance. My high school had no cafeteria, so Abel’s fed me my lunch for three years. I said goodbye to the brothers prior to moving to California. They hated to see me go. “We’re losing one of our best customers “         ‘

   All the schools I attended in Hoboken were only a few blocks from my residence. Years before I attended Stevens Institute of Technology, its campus provided an oasis of greenery in the midst of an industrialized community to me and my boyhood friends. We spent years romping around the campus, using its fields to play football, marbles, and climbing its trees. We raced around its quarter-mile cinder track, and hid in the rocky hills overlooking the railroad line that ran along the docks below the school’s eastern boundary. We watched the collegians play lacrosse, soccer, tennis, and baseball. A guard named Mike constantly chased my pals and me. We feared he would shoot us in the behind with a “pepper gun” he reportedly carried.

   One summer, my teen friends and I invented a new game called “Swing Around the Flag Pole.” In the late summer evenings, when the campus was deserted, we would untie the lanyard from the flagpole located near a tennis court on the main athletic field. Holding onto the rope, we’d climb to the top of the tennis court fence and leap off as though we were skydiving. With luck, our momentum would carry us out and around the pole in an oval path back to the top of the fence.

   In grade school, a stone bench near the tennis courts once served as a hiding place to stash our supply of tobacco, paper, and a roller we used to make our own cigarettes. We could have taught the hippies a thing or two a generation later. We thought we were “so cool”.

   On Memorial Day weekends, all the Hoboken grade school kids would gather to compete in foot races on the Stevens quarter-mile cinder track. In my eighth grade, I finished second to Gigi Taylor in the fifty yard dash. He was the fastest human being alive, I concluded.

One Sunday, my six feet tall eighth grade classmate, William August Patrick Campbell, and I went to the main athletic field and began dropkicking a football over the soccer goal post. His German shepherd, King, grew angry at not being able to retrieve it. Frustrated, King jumped on my back, knocked me down, and bit through my corduroy jacket. His teeth did not puncture my skin, but his attack terrified me. Thus began my fear of dogs which did not end until I had to provide my children with puppies many years later.

   Stevens Institute of Technology was founded in 1870 by Edwin Stevens, a grandson of Colonel John Stevens. Its campus stretches from Fourth to Tenth Streets and from Hudson Street to the Hudson River. Edwin built a large home at its highest elevation called Castle Point. The residence was called Castle Stevens. The family abandoned the building in the 1920’s because of high taxes.

During WW II, the college converted the structure into a dormitory for the students enrolled in the naval military V-12 program. It was in terrible condition when finally torn down to make way for the construction of a modern skyscraper that now serves the college's administrative needs. The choice of saving or demolishing Castle Stevens divided the alumni into two passionate groups. It saddened me when the decision was made to make better use of the land. Part of my childhood went away with its removal.

   Hoboken boasted many factories, including Keuffel and Esser, manufacturers of slide rules and drafting equipment, the American Pencil Company and Maxwell House Coffee, the largest coffee processing plant in the world when it opened in 1938. The aroma of freshly roasted coffee emanating from that plant during the middle of the night was overpowering. It more than offset the stench that used to drift in from Secaucus, located out in the Jersey meadows, the site of numerous slaughterhouses that served metropolitan New York.

   The ten-story Lipton Tea building at the waters edge on 14^th Street was the tallest building in town by far. It housed many manufacturing facilities. Ships would tie up nearby and unload all sorts of exotic spices and foods, which became fair game for longshoremen and adventurous kids. Once some members of my “gang” managed to acquire some coconuts from an incoming shipment, and ran off to the park to eat them. We pounded the coconuts on the pavement until they broke open. It made me glad I did not live in Hawaii.

In 2004, developers turned the Lipton Tea building into upscale condominiums, whose residents include the Governor when not in Trenton, and some of New York’s professional ballplayers.

   Tootsie Rolls, Hostess Cup Cake and Wonder Bread factories were located up the street from Lipton’s. My home town made scents.

   Hoboken, known as the Mile Square City, had a population of some 60,000 people when I grew up there. It was said to be the most densely populated city in the country. You would get no argument from me on that score. Most residents lived in tenements four or five stories high. There were only a few single-family homes in town, the best ones located near the Stevens campus.

   Stevens family members built all of the city’s parks including the Elysian Park at Tenth Street, the Hudson Square Park at Fourth Street, across from my grade school, as well as the Church Square Park near the public library, which itself had been built with funds from another Stevens ancestor. The Stevens family had developed the piers and warehouses, and had designed and built the original ferries that connected the city with New York.

   Stevens and Hoboken were synonymous terms, except the general population, including myself, knew little or nothing about the origins of the city. It was a superb place in which to grow up. After moving to California in 1954, the city declined dramatically. It had no appeal to me.  Now that it has sprung back to life, I was tempted to return. After comparing real estate taxes with Scottsdale, Arizona, that thought of mine vanished.

However, fond memories of my hometown remain. Join me in singing one more chorus of H-O-B-O-K-E-N.

            ▀.