NJ History
How Today’s Glitzy Hoboken Obscures the City’s Dark History
Progress stirs up painful memories and raises questions about who gets to tell Hoboken's stories, including the ten deadly, suspicious fires of the 1970s and '80s.
Group Works to Save the Oft-Forgotten Jersey Side of Ellis Island
A local nonprofit refuses to let the island's abandoned medical buildings crumble into the sea.
Seabrook Farms: The History of NJ’s Japanese Enclave During WWII
The 57-acre Cumberland County farm hired thousands of Japanese Americans who were being held in internment camps during the war.
The Story Behind Chester’s Abandoned Telephone Pole Farm
Highlands Ridge Park is home to a strange sight: hundreds of old telephone poles standing like trees.
Most Recent in History
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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This local dispute garnered national attention. In the end, workers didn’t get everything they wanted, but the strike captured the imaginations of activists around the country, even in New York City—perhaps the last time an injustice in New Jersey received attention on the east bank of the Hudson....
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His last day on Earth was spent in New Jersey. On the cliffs overlooking the North River (as the Hudson was called) and Manhattan Island, he was shot by the vice president of the United States, Aaron Burr, during a duel....
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The media, including this magazine, have been chronicling the 40th anniversary of Newark’s catastrophic summer of 1967...
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Lords Berkeley (1607–1678) and Carteret (1610–1680) They were much more than upper-class white males with fancy hairdos and flowing robes....
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(1902–1974) Lucky Lindy, the greatest American hero of the Jazz Age, moved to New Jersey after his marriage to Anne Morrow in 1929, two years after he became the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean....
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George Washington’s surprise attack turned the tide for the stars and stripes....
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