NJ History
NJ Downtowns Are Breathing New Life Into Empty Old Banks
Developers are capitalizing on these historic, character-rich spaces—turning them into restaurants, event spaces, offices and even a vape shop.
Judge Shuts Down Chance to Re-Examine Lindbergh Kidnapping Case
It’s been 87 years since New Jersey executed Bruno Richard Hauptmann for kidnapping and killing aviator Charles Lindbergh’s 20-month-old son.
Martin Luther King Jr.’s Civil Rights Career Began at a Modest NJ Café
King’s first-ever recorded sit-in—a little-known confrontation at a Maple Shade tavern in 1950—changed world history.
Racism and Hate Have Disturbing Roots in NJ
Ku Klux Klan members and Nazis were part of our state's past long before groups like the Proud Boys showed up.
Most Recent in History
In December 1986, it’s announced that New Jersey will get a new terminal for imported cars—just the latest sign of the state’s declining role as a manufacturing powerhouse. ...
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From lunch wagons to stone edifices, here’s a quick history of the structure you may be sitting in....
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Situation: Every level of government appears to be brimming with unethical officials who, as they conduct the public’s business, view entitlement, favoritism, and lawbreaking as routine....
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The trend in town centers is a look that conjures images of the past, even if it never existed in that zip code before....
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Forty years after the riots that ripped Newark apart, a city scarred by violence and neglect tries to make peace with its past and plant hope for its future....
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Uncle Sam has spoken: The states are virtually on their own to defend assets such as ports, refineries, chemical plants, railways, highways, and bridges against attack.
Fortunately, we don’t have any of those in New Jersey......
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NFL coach Lombardi never suffered a losing season, leading the Green Bay Packers to five championships. He died in 1970; his final resting place: Mt. Olivet Cemetery, Middletown Township....
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Day Trip to Bayonne - New Jersey Monthly - Best of NJ...
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Yogi Berra and Phil Rizzuto “The Scooter” settled in Hillside and Berra is a staple in Montclair....
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On the air since 1979, this noncommercial Newark jazz station (88.3 FM) has become one of the city’s most influential cultural forces....
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After serving as president of Princeton University, this transplanted southerner was elected governor of New Jersey in 1910. Without that step, it’s hard to imagine that he could have been elected the 28th P.O.T.U.S. two years later....
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As Newark commemorates the 40th anniversary of the catastrophic disturbances of 1967, Gibson has enjoyed a brief return to the public spotlight, and understandably so. Gibson became the city’s first African-American mayor after a bitter election battle with Hugh Addonizio in 1970. His victory did not lead to a revival of the shattered city. But it did mark a victory for the state’s African-American population....
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He was the only president born in the state (in Caldwell, in 1837), the only president to serve nonconsecutive terms… Read the rest
She was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1974 and served four terms. A Republican, she was famously independent, known for her pipe smoking and her blueblood style. She inspired the character of Lacey Davenport in Garry Trudeau’s comic strip, Doonesbury....
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Most New Jerseyans know him as a bridge on the Garden State Parkway. But Driscoll earned that immortality as the first governor empowered by the Constitution of 1947. As a reformer, a champion of civil rights, and a conservationist, Driscoll set the template for future activist governors. He served from 1947 to 1954....
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New Jersey had one of the weakest governor’s offices in the country until the state Constitution was rewritten after World War II. The war and the New Deal had shown the importance of strong executive guidance, leading to the revisions. Today, the state has perhaps the most powerful governor’s office in the nation....
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William Livingston was born in Albany in 1723, a member of a wealthy Hudson Valley family. He attended Yale and set up shop as a politically connected lawyer in New York City, but when he and his family fell out of favor in 1772, he, like many other disillusioned New Yorkers through the years, moved to New Jersey....
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A tarpaper shack that could be rotated to catch the sun was America’s first motion picture studio. Thomas Edison’s 1888 “Black Maria” put New Jersey at the center of a revolutionary new medium and big-time business....
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Who was she? Did she really even exist? We know her real name was not Molly Pitcher—that was the nickname she earned on the battlefield, perhaps while bringing water to parched soldiers....
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(1885–1977) A suffrage activist who lived to see the nation’s bicentennial, Paul, a Quaker from Moorestown, earned a doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania and law degrees from Columbia and American universities at a time when few women attended college. She not only advocated for women’s voting rights, in 1964 she helped persuade Congress to add a ban on sex discrimination to the Civil Rights Act....
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