Today’s post is about an under-the-radar community called North Bergen, New Jersey. Why under the radar, you ask? The locals consider it well above any stinking radar. But to the rest of us yokels who live outside Hudson County, I don’t think this small city is particularly well known.
First of all, it’s got a weird gerrymandered shape. Look at the map. It stretches from the Hackensack River on the west to the Hudson River on the east in a panhandle. And from there, it narrows to a long, skinny spine running south along industrial Tonnelle Avenue (with West Side Avenue and JFK Boulevard flanking on the west and east, respectively) until it touches Jersey City.
The adjacent municipalities bordering the Hudson River of Weehawken, Union City, West New York, and Guttenberg (named for Johannes Gutenberg, the inventor of movable type) over time seceded from the original North Bergen Township, leaving no coherent downtown. Just a confusing urban sprawl without marked borders between all constituent parts. Taken together, North Bergen and the municipalities carved from it are home to more than 200,000 souls. The population density rivals New York City. In Guttenberg, for example, it reaches 58,000 per square mile (thanks largely to the Galaxy Towers).
So why all the hullabaloo?
The Bernard Olcott Story 