Etymology The name Hoboken was chosen by Colonel
John Stevens when he bought land on a part of which the city still sits. The
Lenape, later called Delaware Indian tribe of
Native Americans, referred to the area as the "land of the tobacco pipe", most likely to refer to the
soapstone collected there to carve
tobacco pipes, and used a phrase that became "Hopoghan Hackingh". Like
Weehawken, its neighbor to the north, as well as
Communipaw and
Harsimus to the south, Hoboken had many variations in the folks-tongue.
Hoebuck, old Dutch for high bluff, and likely referring to Castle Point, the district of the city highest above sea level, was used during the colonial era, and was later spelled as
Hobuck,
Hobock,
Hobuk and
Hoboocken. However, in the nineteenth century, the name was changed to Hoboken, influenced by
Flemish immigrants, and a
folk etymology had emerged, linking the town of Hoboken to the similarly-named
Hoboken district of
Antwerp. Hoboken has been nicknamed the Mile Square City,
Early-European arrival and colonial period during the 1880s offshore from Hoboken and
Jersey City Hoboken was originally an island which was surrounded by the
Hudson River on the east and tidal lands at the foot of the
New Jersey Palisades on the west. It was a seasonal campsite in the territory of the
Hackensack, a
phratry of the
Lenni Lenape, who used the serpentine rock found there to carve pipes. An entry made in the journal of Hudson's mate, Robert Juet, on that date, is the earliest known reference to the area today known as Hoboken, and would be the last known such reference until twenty years later. Soon after the area became part of the province of
New Netherland. In 1630,
Michael Reyniersz Pauw, a burgemeester (mayor) of
Amsterdam and a director of the
Dutch West India Company, received a land grant as
patroon on the condition that he would plant a colony of not fewer than fifty persons within four years on the west bank of what had been named the
North River. Three Lenape sold the land that became Hoboken and part of Jersey City for 80 fathoms (146 m) of
wampum, 20 fathoms (37 m) of cloth, 12 kettles, six guns, two blankets, one double kettle, and half a barrel of beer. In 1664, the English took possession of
New Amsterdam with little to no resistance, and in 1668 they confirmed a previous land patent by Nicolas Verlett. In 1674–1675, the area became part of
East Jersey, and the province was divided into four administrative districts, Hoboken becoming part of
Bergen County, where it remained until the creation of
Hudson County on February 22, 1840. English-speaking settlers (some relocating from New England) interspersed with the Dutch, but it remained sparsely populated and agrarian. Eventually, the land came into the possession of William
Bayard, who originally supported the revolutionary cause, but became a
Loyalist Tory after the fall of New York in 1776 when the city and surrounding areas, including the west bank of the renamed Hudson River, were occupied by the British. At the end of the
Revolutionary War, Bayard's property was confiscated by the Revolutionary Government of New Jersey. In 1784, the land described as "William Bayard's farm at Hoebuck" was bought at auction by Colonel
John Stevens for £18,360 (then $90,000). On October 11, 1811, Stevens' ship the
Juliana, began to operate as a
ferry between Manhattan and Hoboken, making it the world's first commercial steam ferry. In 1825, he designed and built a
steam locomotive capable of hauling several passenger cars at his estate.
Sybil's Cave, a cave with a natural spring, was opened in 1832 and visitors came to pay a penny for a glass of water from the cave which was said to have medicinal powers. In 1841, the cave became a legend, when
Edgar Allan Poe wrote "
The Mystery of Marie Roget" about an event that took place there. The cave was closed in the late 1880s after the water was found to be contaminated, and it was shut and in the 1930s and filled with concrete, before it was reopened in 2008. Before his death in 1838, Stevens founded the
Hoboken Land and Improvement Company, which laid out a regular system of streets, blocks and lots, constructed housing, and developed manufacturing sites. In general, the housing consisted of masonry row houses of three to five stories, some of which survive to the present day, as does the street grid. Hoboken was originally formed as a
township on April 9, 1849, from portions of
North Bergen Township. As the town grew in population and employment, many of Hoboken's residents saw a need to incorporate as a full-fledged city, and in a referendum held on March 29, 1855, ratified an Act of the
New Jersey Legislature signed the previous day, and the City of Hoboken was born. Based on a bequest from
Edwin A. Stevens,
Stevens Institute of Technology was founded at
Castle Point in 1870, at the site of the
Stevens family's former estate, as the nation's first
mechanical engineering college. By the late 19th century, shipping lines were using Hoboken as a terminal port, and the
Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad (later the
Erie Lackawanna Railroad) developed a railroad terminal at the waterfront, with the present
NJ Transit terminal designed by architect
Kenneth Murchison constructed in 1907. It was also during this time that German immigrants, who had been settling in town during most of the century, became the predominant population group in the city, at least partially due to its being a major destination port of the
Hamburg America Line, though anti-German sentiment during World War I led to a rapid decline in the German community. In addition to the primary industry of shipbuilding, Hoboken became home to
Keuffel and Esser's three-story factory and in 1884, to Tietjen and Lang Drydock (later
Todd Shipyards). Well-known companies that developed a major presence in Hoboken after the turn-of the-century included
Maxwell House,
Lipton Tea, and
Hostess.
Birthplace of baseball The first officially recorded game of
baseball took place in Hoboken in 1846 between
Knickerbocker Club and New York Nine at
Elysian Fields. In 1845, the Knickerbocker Club, which had been founded by
Alexander Cartwright, began using Elysian Fields to play
baseball due to the lack of suitable grounds on
Manhattan. Team members included players of the
St George's Cricket Club, the brothers
Harry and
George Wright, and
Henry Chadwick, the English-born journalist who coined the term "America's Pastime". By the 1850s, several
Manhattan-based members of the
National Association of Base Ball Players were using the grounds as their home field while St. George's continued to organize international matches between Canada, England and the United States at the same venue. In 1859,
George Parr's All England Eleven of professional cricketers played the United States XXII at Hoboken, easily defeating the local competition. Sam Wright and his sons Harry and George Wright played on the defeated United States team, a loss which inadvertently encouraged local players to take up baseball. Henry Chadwick believed that baseball and not cricket should become the national pastime after the game drawing the conclusion that amateur American players did not have the leisure time required to develop cricket skills to the high technical level required of professional players.
Harry Wright and
George Wright then became two of the first professional baseball players in the United States when Aaron Champion raised funds to found the
Cincinnati Red Stockings in 1869. In 1865, the grounds hosted a championship match between the
Mutual Club of New York City and the
Atlantic Club of
Brooklyn that was attended by an estimated 20,000 fans and captured in the
Currier & Ives lithograph "The American National Game of Base Ball". With the construction of two significant baseball parks enclosed by fences in
Brooklyn, enabling promoters there to charge admission to games, the prominence of
Elysian Fields diminished. In 1868 the leading
Manhattan club,
Mutual, shifted its home games to the
Union Grounds in Brooklyn. In 1880, the founders of the
New York Metropolitans and
New York Giants finally succeeded in siting a ballpark in Manhattan that became known as the
Polo Grounds.
20th century shortly after it opened in 1907 Few nonwhites had settled in Hoboken by 1901. The
Brooklyn Eagle claimed that an unwritten
sundown town policy prevented African Americans from residing or working there.
World War I When the U.S. entered
World War I, the
Hamburg-American Line piers in Hoboken and
New Orleans were taken under
eminent domain. Federal control of the port and anti-German sentiment led to part of the city being placed under martial law, and many German immigrants were forcibly moved to
Ellis Island or left the city of their own accord. Hoboken became the major point of embarkation and more than three million soldiers, known as "
doughboys", passed through the city. Their hope for an early return led to
General Pershing's slogan, "Heaven, Hell or Hoboken... by Christmas." Following the war,
Italians, mostly stemming from the
Adriatic port city of
Molfetta, became the city's major ethnic group, with the
Irish also having a strong presence. While the city experienced the
Great Depression, jobs in the ships yards and factories were still available, and the tenements were bustling. Middle-European Jews, mostly German-speaking, also made their way to the city and established small businesses. The
Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which was established on April 30, 1921, oversaw the development of the
Holland Tunnel (completed in 1927) and the
Lincoln Tunnel (in 1937), allowing for easier vehicular travel between New Jersey and New York City, bypassing the waterfront.
Post-World War II The war facilitated economic growth in Hoboken, as the many industries located in the city were crucial to the war effort. As men went off to battle, more women were hired in the factories, some (most notably,
Todd Shipyards), offering classes and other incentives to them. Though some returning service men took advantage of GI housing bills, many with strong ethnic and familial ties chose to stay in town. During the 1950s, the economy was still driven by Todd Shipyards,
Maxwell House,
Lipton Tea,
Hostess and
Bethlehem Steel and companies with big plants were still not inclined to invest in major infrastructure elsewhere. In the 1960s, working pay and conditions began to deteriorate: turn-of-the century housing started to look shabby and feel crowded, shipbuilding was cheaper overseas, and single-story plants surrounded by parking lots made manufacturing and distribution more economical than old brick buildings on congested urban streets. The city appeared to be in the throes of inexorable decline as industries sought (what had been) greener pastures, port operations shifted to larger facilities on
Newark Bay, and the car, truck and plane displaced the railroad and ship as the transportation modes of choice in the United States. Many Hobokenites headed to the suburbs, often the close by ones in
Bergen and
Passaic Counties, and real-estate values declined. Hoboken sank from its earlier incarnation as a lively port town into a rundown condition and was often included in lists with other New Jersey cities experiencing the same phenomenon, such as
Paterson,
Elizabeth,
Camden, and neighboring
Jersey City. The old economic underpinnings were gone and nothing new seemed to be on the horizon. Attempts were made to stabilize the population by demolishing the so-called slums along River Street and build subsidized middle-income housing at Marineview Plaza, and in midtown, at Church Towers. Heaps of long uncollected garbage and roving packs of semi-wild dogs were not uncommon sights. Though the city had seen better days, Hoboken was never abandoned. New infusions of immigrants, most notably
Puerto Ricans, kept the storefronts open with small businesses and housing stock from being abandoned, but there wasn't much work to be had. Washington Street, commonly called "the avenue", was never boarded up, and the tight-knit neighborhoods remained home to many who were still proud of their city. Stevens remained a premier technology school, Maxwell House kept chugging away, and Bethlehem Steel still housed sailors who were dry-docked on its piers. Italian-Americans and other came back to the "old neighborhood" to shop for delicatessen. was converted into residential apartments in 1975. In 1975, the western part of the
Keuffel and Esser Manufacturing Complex (known as "Clock Towers") was converted into residential apartments, after having been an architectural, engineering and drafting facility from 1907 to 1968; The southern portion (which had been a U.S. base of the
Hamburg-American Line) was seized by the federal government under
eminent domain at the outbreak of
World War I, after which it became (with the rest of the Hudson County) a major East Coast cargo-shipping port. With the development of the
Interstate Highway System and
containerization shipping facilities (particularly at
Port Newark-Elizabeth Marine Terminal), the docks became obsolete, and by the 1970s were more or less abandoned. The northern portion, which had remained in private hands, has also been re-developed. While most of the dry-dock and production facilities were razed to make way for mid-rise apartment houses, many sold as investment condominiums, some buildings were renovated for adaptive re-use (notably the Tea Building, formerly home to Lipton Tea, and the Machine Shop, home of the Hoboken Historic Museum). Zoning requires that new construction follow the street grid and limits the height of new construction to retain the architectural character of the city and open sight-lines to the river. Downtown,
Frank Sinatra Park and
Sinatra Drive honor the man most consider to be Hoboken's most famous son, while uptown the name Maxwell recalls the factory with its smell of roasting coffee wafting over town and its huge neon "Good to the Last Drop" sign, so long a part of the landscape. The midtown section is dominated by the
serpentine rock outcropping atop of which sits Stevens Institute of Technology (which also owns some, as yet, undeveloped land on the river). At the foot of the cliff is
Sybil's Cave (where 19th century day-trippers once came to "take the waters" from a natural spring), long sealed shut, though plans for its restoration are in place. The promenade along the river bank is part of the
Hudson River Waterfront Walkway, a state-mandated master plan to connect the municipalities from the
Bayonne Bridge to
George Washington Bridge and provide contiguous unhindered access to the water's edge and to create an urban linear park offering expansive views of the Hudson with the spectacular backdrop of the New York skyline. As of 2017, the city was considering using
eminent domain to take over the last operating maritime industry in the city, the Union Dry Dock.
1970s–present During the late 1970s and 1980s, the city witnessed a speculation spree, fueled by transplanted New Yorkers and others who bought many turn-of-the-20th-century brownstones in neighborhoods that the still solid middle and working class population had kept intact and by local and out-of-town real-estate investors who bought up late 19th century apartment houses often considered to be tenements. Hoboken experienced a wave of fires, some of which were arson. Applied Housing, a real-estate investment firm, used federal government incentives to renovate "sub-standard" housing and receive subsidized rental payments (commonly known as
Section 8), which enabled some low-income, displaced, and disabled residents to move within town. Hoboken attracted artists, musicians, upwardly mobile commuters, and "bohemian types" interested in the socioeconomic possibilities and challenges of a bankrupt New York and who valued the aesthetics of Hoboken's residential, civic and commercial architecture, its sense of community, and relatively (compared to Lower Manhattan) less expensive rents, all a quick, train hop away. These trends in development resembled similar growth and change patterns in
Brooklyn and downtown
Jersey City and Manhattan's
East Village—and to a lesser degree,
SoHo and
TriBeCa—which previously had not been residential. Empty lots were built on, tenements were transformed into luxury condominiums. Hoboken felt the impact of the destruction of the
World Trade Center intensely, many of its newer residents having worked there. Re-zoning encouraged new construction on former industrial sites on the waterfront and the traditionally more impoverished low-lying west side of the city where, in concert with Hudson-Bergen Light Rail and New Jersey State land-use policy,
transit villages are now being promoted. Once a
blue collar town characterized by live poultry shops and drab taverns, it has since been transformed into a town filled with gourmet shops and luxury condominiums. leaving the city without electricity for days, and requiring the summoning of the
National Guard. Workers in Hoboken had the highest rate of public transportation use in the nation, with 56% commuting daily via mass transit. Hurricane Sandy caused seawater to flood half the city, crippling the PATH station at Hoboken Terminal when more than 10 million gallons of water dumped into the system. In December 2013 Mayor Dawn Zimmer testified before a U.S. Senate Committee on the impact the storm had on Hoboken's businesses and residents, and in January 2014 she stated that Lieutenant Governor Kim Guadagno and Richard Constable, a member of governor
Chris Christie's cabinet, deliberately held back Hurricane Sandy relief funds from the city in order to pressure her to approve a Christie ally's developmental project, a charge that the Christie administration denied. In June 2014, the
United States Department of Housing and Urban Development allocated $230 million to Hoboken as part of its Rebuild by Design initiative, adding levees, parks, green roofs,
retention basins and other infrastructure to help the low-lying riverfront city protect itself from ordinary flooding and build a network of features to help Hoboken
future-proof itself against subsequent storms. The project included expanding the city's sewer capacity, incorporating
cisterns and basins into parks and playgrounds, redesigning streets to minimize traffic accidents, and collect and redirect waster. By September 2023, the improvements were so successful that when a storm hit the area that month, depositing 3.5 inches on the city, including 1.44 inches during the hour coinciding with high tide, only a few inches of standing water remains at three of the city's 277 intersections by the evening, resulting in only three towed cars, and no cancelation of any city events. In an article that November for
The New York Times, Michael Kimmelman compared this to the storm's effects in New York City, whose government focused on
flood walls and
breakwaters, but not rainwater, resulting in several subway lines being submerged in water, and thigh-high water levels in Brooklyn streets. For this, the article hailed Hoboken as a "climate change success story." ==Geography==