Jersey City’s Hook
Part One

By Richard B. Marrin

The cries of “Colgate”, “Liberty Harbor” and “Exchange Place” are familiar ones now to ferry travelers between Manhattan and Jersey City. But before 9/11 and the destruction of the PATH connection, few ever visited this pleasant community of giant office towers and well kept, 19th century brownstones. Known to the purist as Paulus Hook, this part of Jersey City has, like much of the New York harbor waterfront, layers upon layers of history upon which we commuters can reflect.

Dutch days

Michael Paulsen of the Dutch West Indies Company began it all when, in 1633, he erected a fur trading hut on a spit of high sand dunes that jutted into the Hudson. The spot became Powles’ Hook, the philological ancestor of today’s Paulus Hook. Westward were wetlands, a swampy marsh, dotted with small islands. Beyond that, laid the wilds of North America!

In 1638, Abraham Planck bought the property for 450 guilders. He was going to put it to agricultural use, but never got much of a chance. Indian uprisings, brought about in part by unscrupulous trade practices of the Dutch, led to the burning of the first settlements. Planck and the Dutch colonists were forced back across the Hudson to New Amsterdam.

A Busy Place in the 1700’s

In 1699, Cornelius Van Vorst paid 300 pounds “current money of New York” for the property. The site had already earned a spot in history. Two thirds of a century before, William Jansen had established the first ferry service across the Hudson there. But, it was the Van Vorst family that would convert Paulus Hook into a transportation hub, linking New York with points to the west and south. It is a role it still plays today.

An item from the New York Gazette and Weekly Mercury, of April 11, 1768, under the headline “Good News for the Public” announced the arrival of “The long wished for Ferry from the place called Powles’s Hook to the City of New York”. The boats were wide, flat bottomed periaugers, which made the trips across the river “as the wind served”. They were “properly constructed for the convenience of passengers, horses and carriages alike” and Paulus Hook was “thought by far the most convenient place for a ferry of any yet established, or that can be established, from the Province of New-Jersey to the City of New-York. The distance between to the two points was only 3/4 of a mile and low tide did not hinder landing at either location”. Another advantage was that “in the Winter season, [there] is rarely a day but that the boats may pass at this ferry without being obstructed or endangered by ice”.

Once across the Hudson, the traveler from New York could catch a stage to Newark every Wednesday and Thursday between 2 and 3 pm. Fare was a shilling. The owners, “endeavored to oblige the Public by keeping the best of Wagons and sober Drivers”. Even then, they sought the business traveler: “Persons may now go from New York to Philadelphia and back again in five days, and remain in Philadelphia two nights and one day to do their business”.

A Colonial Meadowlands!