Journal moves, square gets its name

Wednesday, May 02, 2007

By MICHELLE DONOHUE

JOURNAL STAFF WRITER

Before the congestion and traffic, the central district that would later become Journal Square was a residential community of Victorian-era homes with wrap-around porches lining cobblestone roads. The tallest building was Grace M.E. Church.

All that began to change, however, when the Hudson and Manhattan Tubes - the predecessor of the PATH system - opened in 1909 with a station in the area that would later become Journal Square. At that time, the street-level trolley system's main station and headquarters were also located in the area - in the Sip Avenue building where Hudson County Community College now is - helping to turn a once-quiet neighborhood into a bustling transportation hub.

Before moving to the Square, The Jersey Journal had already had three addresses in Downtown Jersey City. Co-publisher Joseph A. Dear II, who wanted his newspaper located closer to the Tubes, decided to move the Journal from 37 Montgomery St. to a new building in the Square in 1912.

The new headquarters faced Bergen Avenue and stood out with its clock tower. Jersey City historian J. Owen Grundy wrote in "The History of Jersey City" that The Jersey Journal was "perhaps the first to see what lay in the future."

Fourteen years after moving to the area, Dear pushed for a Bergen Avenue expansion. As the Journal began plans to erect a new building - at what is now the current home of the newspaper at 30 Journal Square - the owner allowed the city in 1923 to condemn the Journal's original Square building to make way for an open plaza.

To recognize the newspaper's support for the Bergen Avenue expansion, Mayor Frank "I Am the Law" Hague named the area Journal Square.

In 1929, in a bitter dispute with the newspaper, Hague changed the area's name from Journal Square to Veterans Square. But the name change was short-lived.

"The boom really started with the two train stations, but it all happened when The Jersey Journal came in," said John Gomez, founder and past president of the Jersey City Landmarks Conservancy, who writes the "Legends & Landmarks" column for The Jersey Journal. "It was like three things happened at once. There was no stopping it."

Since the Journal Square dedication in December 1926, both the newspaper and location have seen changes.

Recently, the city condemned several properties on the Square to make way for two $600 million residential towers, one 52 stories and the other 46 stories, including 150,000 square feet of retail space.

"Every time I go up there, there is some sort of construction," said James Halliday, a Jersey City resident for 30 years. "They have a long way to go to catch up to the Downtown area."

But while The Journal has changed as much as its neighborhood, it still stands by what Co-publisher Dear had in mind back in 1922 when he said:

"My motto is: The public must know The Jersey Journal is the best buy on any newsstand."