Early settlement The
Lenape peoples were inhabiting the area when Captain
Henry Hudson was the first European to record the area in 1609. In 1756 Stephen Bourdette acquired 400 acres of land which included modern-day Fort Lee.
Colonial era are a prominent feature of the
borough of Fort Lee, with
several over 300 feet tall. Originally known as Fort Constitution, after
George Washington and his troops had camped at
Mount Constitution overlooking
Burdett's Landing, in defense of New York City. It was during
Washington's retreat in November 1776 (beginning along a road which is now Main Street) that
Thomas Paine composed his pamphlet,
The American Crisis, which began with the recognized phrase, "These are the times that try men's souls." These events are recalled at Monument Park and
Fort Lee Historic Park.
Formation Fort Lee was formed by an act of the
New Jersey Legislature on March 29, 1904, from the remaining portions of
Ridgefield Township. With the creation of Fort Lee, Ridgefield Township became defunct and was dissolved as of March 29, 1904. The
Fort Lee Police Department was formed under borough ordinance on August 9, 1904, and originally consisted of six marshals.
America's first motion picture industry The history of
cinema in the United States can trace its roots to the
East Coast, where, at one time, Fort Lee was the
motion picture capital of America. The industry got its start in the state at the end of the 19th century with the construction of
Thomas Edison's "
Black Maria", the first
motion picture studio, in
West Orange, New Jersey. New Jersey offered land at costs considerably less than New York City, and the cities and towns along the
Hudson River and
the Palisades benefited greatly as a result of the phenomenal growth of the film industry at the turn of the 20th century.
A large number of early films were shot in Fort Lee. Filmmaking began attracting both capital and an innovative workforce, and when the
Kalem Company began using Fort Lee in 1907 as a location for filming in the area, other filmmakers quickly followed. In 1909, a forerunner of
Universal Studios, the
Champion Film Company, built the first studio. They were quickly followed by others who either built new studios or who leased facilities in Fort Lee. In the 1910s and 1920s, film companies such as the
Independent Moving Pictures Company,
Peerless Studios,
The Solax Company,
Éclair Studios,
Goldwyn Picture Corporation,
American Méliès (Star Films),
World Film Company,
Biograph Studios,
Fox Film Corporation,
Pathé Frères,
Metro Pictures Corporation,
Victor Film Company, and
Selznick Pictures Corporation were all making pictures in Fort Lee. Such notables as
Mary Pickford got their start at Biograph Studios. Nestor Studios, owned by David and William Horsley, later merged with Universal Studios; and William Horsley's other company, Hollywood Film Laboratory, is now the oldest existing company in Hollywood, now called the Hollywood Digital Laboratory. The
Influenza pandemic and brutally cold weather led some film studios to start heading west by 1920;
California's more temperate climate enabled year-round filming and led to the eventual shift of virtually all filmmaking to the
West Coast by the 1930s. At the time,
Thomas Edison owned almost all the patents relevant to motion picture production. Movie producers on the East Coast acting independently of Edison's Motion Picture Patents Company were often sued or enjoined by Edison and his agents, while movie makers working on the West Coast could work independently of Edison's control, in part due to the
Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals–which was headquartered in
San Francisco and covered most of
Southern California–being well known for not enforcing patents claims. On
July 9, 1937, a major fire broke out in a
20th Century-Fox storage facility in nearby
Little Ferry containing hazardous extremely flammable
nitrate film reels, destroying most of the silent films that had been produced in Fort Lee by
Fox Film Corporation, one of the borough's first film studios.
Television and film in New Jersey remains an important industry. Since 2000, the Fort Lee Film Commission has been charged with celebrating the history of film in Fort Lee, as well as attracting film and television production companies to the borough. The
Barrymore Film Center promotes films, filmmaking and its history in the borough.
Birthplace of subliminal messaging In 1957, market researcher
James Vicary claimed that quickly flashing messages on a movie screen, in Fort Lee, had influenced people to purchase more food and drinks. Vicary coined the term
subliminal advertising and formed the Subliminal Projection Company based on a six-week test. Vicary claimed that during the presentation of the movie
Picnic he used a
tachistoscope to project the words "Drink
Coca-Cola" and "Hungry? Eat popcorn" for 1/3000 of a second at five-second intervals. Vicary asserted that during the test, sales of popcorn and Coke in that New Jersey theater increased 57.8% and 18.1% respectively. In 1962, Vicary admitted to lying about the experiment and falsifying the results, the story itself being a marketing ploy. An identical experiment conducted by Henry Link showed no increase in cola or popcorn sales. a number which has risen significantly since then, featuring restaurants and
karaoke (
noraebang) bars, grocery markets, education centers and
bookstores, banking institutions, offices, electronics vendors, apparel boutiques, and other commercial enterprises. Various Korean American groups could not reach consensus on the design and wording for a monument in Fort Lee as of early April 2013 to the memory of
comfort women, tens of thousands of women and girls, many Korean, who were forced into
sexual slavery by
Japanese soldiers during
World War II. In May 2012, borough officials in neighboring Palisades Park rejected requests by two
diplomatic delegations from
Japan to remove such a
monument from a public park, a
brass plaque on a block of stone, dedicated in 2010; days later, a
South Korean delegation had endorsed Palisades Park's decision. In October 2012, a similar memorial was announced in nearby
Hackensack, to be raised behind the
Bergen County Courthouse, alongside memorials to the
Holocaust, the
Great Famine of Ireland, and the
Armenian genocide, and was unveiled in March 2013. On May 23, 2018, a comfort women memorial was installed in Constitution Park in Fort Lee. Youth Council of Fort Lee, a student organization led by Korean American high school students in Fort Lee designed the memorial.
George Washington Bridge lane closure scandal The
Fort Lee lane closure scandal, also known as Bridgegate, was a political scandal concerning the actions taken by the staff of
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and his
Port Authority appointees to create a traffic jam in Fort Lee when dedicated toll lanes for one of the Fort Lee entrances to the upper level on the
George Washington Bridge were reduced from three to one from September 9, 2013, to September 13, 2013. Three members of the Christie administration were convicted on federal conspiracy charges for their roles in the lane closures. One of the reasons suggested for these actions was to punish Fort Lee Mayor
Mark Sokolich, a
Democrat, for not supporting the
Republican Chris Christie in the
2013 New Jersey gubernatorial election. Another theory was that Christie or his aides sought to punish
New Jersey Senate majority leader,
Loretta Weinberg, who represented the
New Jersey district containing Fort Lee, as retribution for the Democrats' blocking of Christie's reappointment of a
New Jersey Supreme Court justice. Christie withdrew his appointee consideration and delivered a speech referring to New Jersey Senate Democrats as "animals" just one day before emails were sent by Christie's aides to the Port Authority requesting the lane closures. ==Demographics==