Issue 216: Bergen Square Day

Plus a shooting on JFK, NJ Transit woes and former BOE President Sudhan Thomas pleads guilty.

Happy Sunday Neighborhood Characters! This week we catch up with the President of the Board of the Museum of Jersey City History.

Neighborhood Character: Bergen Square

While Journal Square may be better known, there’s actually a much older square in Jersey City that was central to our fair city’s origins — the site of the first Dutch settlement in New Jersey. On Saturday, September 13, Jersey City will celebrate Bergen Square Day. 

A concerted multi-year effort by local residents and the city saw the area, which had been dominated by parking lots, revitalized in 2023 as a public space with walkways for pedestrians, a covered bike lane and, of course, some on-street parking. 

For thousands of years, the land we know today as Jersey City was inhabited by the Lenni Lenape people. While their permanent residents were on the western side of the Hackensack River in what we know today as Newark, every spring and summer the Lenni Lenape people “would come down this way – actually Communipaw [Ave.] was their trail – to the water to fish and to harvest oysters,” said James Dievler, the president of the board of the Museum of Jersey City History. 

In the 1600s, after establishing New Amsterdam (modern day Manhattan), Dutch settlers began to venture west at the behest of Peter Stuyvesant (who history has now shown to be a slave-trader and anti-semite) to find a location on high ground and build a defensive stockade, said Dievler, who is also chairman of the history committee of the Journal Square Community Association.

In 1660, they settled on Bergen Square, which became the first permanent European settlement in New Jersey. The center of the square is the intersection of Bergen and Academy Streets. It is bordered by Newkirk Street to the North, Vroom Street to the South, Van Reypen Street to the West and Tuers Avenue to the East. 

For two centuries, Bergen Square was a “main celebration place for the city,” said Dievler. To commemorate that tradition there will be live music, food vendors, merchants, and community groups in the square  from 12-6pm next Saturday, Sep.13. The public party is part of a collaboration between the Journal Square Community Association, Museum of Jersey City History, Journal Square Special Improvement District and Jersey City Office of Cultural Affairs. 

“We re-envisioned and re-imagined and re-created Bergen square as a place of community exchange, and that's what this festival is all about,” Dievler said. 

The museum will be hosting special exhibits and historical walking tours starting at 298 Academy Street and there will be an actor playing “Jane Tuers, the famous patriot who saved the American Revolution.” 

Jane who? 

“That's a great story,” he said. “She lived in Bergen in the 1770s and 80s .. She got close to a British officer, found out about British plans to cut off Washington from the rest of the colonies. She got the word to Washington's army and basically saved the revolution.”

Another fun fact: Dievler said the writer Washington Irving who wrote the story Rip Van Winkle, the man who fell asleep for 20 years and missed the American Revolution, got the name for his story from the Van Winkle family gravestones in the cemetery of Old Bergen Church. 

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Odds and Ends

School board corruption: Former JC BOE President Sudhan Thomas pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit bribery in his capacity as an elected official. He was among a handful of low-rent pols to take thousands of dollars from a tax attorney who steered money to elected officials in exchange for government contracts. 

The tax attorney, Matt O’Donnell, was a cooperating witness in a sting by the State AG’s office, that took out a handful of other low-road pols who’d cut a similar deal, according to David Wildstein, a scoop machine and a bit of an expert on witness cooperation. 

In a press release, AG Matt Platkin said Sudhan “placed personal profit ahead of fulfilling his duties.” 

Shooting on JFK: On Friday, we received a text message from the city emergency alert system at 2:06pm saying JFK Blvd was “temporarily closed in both directions between Lexington & Clendenny due to police activity” and heard helicopters flying overhead. 

That’s because of a shootout between police and a man who was firing a weapon at civilians and officers, according to city and state officials. 

According to our friends at Gothamist: “Shortly after 1 p.m. city officials said a man began firing a weapon near Clinton Street and John F. Kennedy Boulevard on Jersey City's West Side. As he approached a marked police vehicle, he began firing at officers as well, according to Mayor Steve Fulop's office. … According to the state Attorney General’s office, the assailant later died as a result of his injuries. His identity has not been released and it’s unclear what kind of weapon he was using.”

Bus Rant: Is it too much to ask that New Jersey Transit could give commuters a heads up when they decide to switch bus lanes? For weeks, anyone who commutes home on the 80 has had to go out the back doors of the Journal Square Transportation Center, up the steps, through the courtyard and over to Summit Ave. where a small plastic A-frame sign indicated the temporary stop for the 80 and 87 Bus Routes. Then, suddenly, on Thursday night the sign was no longer there. But there wasn’t any new signage to indicate where we now were supposed to get the bus. After 10 minutes waiting with no buses, myself and a dozen other people were informed by a passer-by that the routes had changed again. 

There wasn’t any signage within JSQ – not when exiting the path, not on the door where you enter to get the buses, not on the door where you exit to go up the stairs in the back. No, the only sign was one on the door to Bus Lane A, which we have all been summarily ignoring since, you know, we were told the lanes would be closed indefinitely for “construction.” 

We go upstairs to Bus Lane A, which, allegedly, has been under construction only to find it looks … exactly the same? Still dirty, still crumbling, still gray. Am I missing something?

Pompei Party! Our friends at Pompei Pizza are throwing another Sunday Supper, next week, Sept. 14th, from 5:30 p.m. to 9 p.m. Come get your Sunday gravy on! More info here.

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Feral(s) of the Week

Our eagle-eyed neighbor Mike spotted a family of raccoons traveling vertically up an apartment building while drinking his morning coffee.

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