New Brunswick, New Jersey

• 1. Introduction

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  New Brunswick, New Jersey sits 33 miles southwest of New York Penn Station, but its story is not simply one of a city in another city's orbit. On the 9th of July, 1776, Colonel John Neilson stood in this city and read aloud the Declaration of Independence, days after the Continental Congress had promulgated it. A bronze statue now marks the spot in Monument Square, dedicated on the same date in 2017. That moment captures something essential about New Brunswick: a place where large events land, where competing forces collide, and where the lives of ordinary people get caught in the current of history. How did a settlement first known as Prigmore's Swamp become the headquarters of Johnson and Johnson? How did a city along the Raritan River become the most Hungarian city in the United States, and then something else entirely? And what happened when a revitalization plan meant to rescue the city required tearing it apart first?

• 2. A City Named by Kings

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  Prigmore's Swamp was the first name anyone gave to the European settlement established here in 1681. It became Inian's Ferry by 1691, a practical name for a practical crossing on the Raritan River. The name New Brunswick arrived in 1714, drawn from the city of Braunschweig in the state of Lower Saxony, Germany, a city that had been a powerful administrative seat in the Hanseatic League. The timing was not coincidental. George, Duke of Brunswick-Luneburg and Elector of Hanover, had just become King George I of Great Britain. Some accounts attribute the naming to his successor, King George II, also Duke of Brunswick-Luneburg. Either way, the name planted a transatlantic flag. The location was deliberate from the start. Centrally positioned between New York City and Philadelphia along the King's Highway, and sitting on the south bank of the Raritan River, the town became a hub for Colonial travelers and traders. It was incorporated as a town in 1736 and chartered as a city in 1784. Before that, in the winter of 1776-1777, it was occupied by the British during the Revolutionary War, a fact that underscores how contested the Raritan Valley was during the conflict. The Lenape people had already mapped the terrain long before Europeans arrived; their Minisink Trail crossed the Raritan River at this point and traced a route that colonial roads would follow.

• 3. Queens College and the Red Lion

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  In 1771, the Trustees of Queen's College voted ten to seven to place the young college in New Brunswick, choosing it over Hackensack in Bergen County. Classes began that same year with one instructor, one sophomore named Matthew Leydt, and several freshmen gathered at a tavern called the Sign of the Red Lion, on the corner of Albany and Neilson Streets, on grounds that would eventually become the Johnson and Johnson corporate headquarters. Leydt graduated in 1774 as the only member of his class, making him the university's first graduate. The Sign of the Red Lion was purchased on behalf of Queens College in 1771 and later sold to the estate of Jacob Rutsen Hardenbergh in 1791. Through the American Revolution, classes continued in various taverns, boarding houses, and a building on George Street called College Hall. Old Queens was completed and opened in 1811 and remains the oldest building on the Rutgers University campus today. The New Brunswick Theological Seminary, founded in New York in 1784, moved to New Brunswick in 1810 and shared quarters with the struggling Queens College, which closed entirely from 1810 to 1825 due to financial problems before reopening as Rutgers College. The seminary eventually relocated to a seven-acre tract less than a mile to the west, which still sits within Rutgers University's College Avenue Campus. After Rutgers became the state university of New Jersey in 1945, it divested itself of the Rutgers Preparatory School, which moved in 1957 to an estate purchased from Colgate-Palmolive in Franklin Township.

• 4. Slavery and Its Survivors

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  The Market-House, standing at the corner of Hiram Street and Queen Street adjacent to the Raritan Wharf, was the center of commercial life in 18th-century New Brunswick, and also a site of regular slave auctions. Local newspapers including The Fredonian, located less than a block from the Market-House, carried advertisements in which private owners offered enslaved people for sale. The majority of those advertisements were for female slaves, whose average age at the time of sale was 20 years old. The demand for domestic labor in the city made women especially sought after. The New Jersey Legislature passed an Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery in 1804, but it came with a hard constraint: children born to enslaved women after the 4th of July 1804, would serve their masters for 21 years if girls and 25 years if boys. Those already enslaved before that date would remain enslaved for life. By 1810, the United States census listed 53 free Black residents and 164 slaves in New Brunswick. Free African Americans in the early 19th century could gather in a section of the city called Halfpenny Town, along the Raritan River on the east side, where free Black residents and poorer whites who did not own slaves lived alongside each other. The African Association of New Brunswick was established in 1817, meeting monthly in private homes and occasionally at the First Presbyterian Church. Enslaved people who wanted to attend were required to obtain a pass from their owner. By 1827, Joseph and Jane Hoagland and others came together to establish the Mount Zion African Methodist Episcopal Church, purchasing a plot on Division Street. It was the first African American church in Middlesex County, and it still operates today at 39 Hildebrand Way, the street named after Rev. Henry Alphonso Hildebrand, who served as pastor for 37 years, the longest appointment in the church's history. An 1828 census conducted by the New Brunswick Common Council counted 4,435 white residents and 374 free African Americans, alongside 57 slaves serving life terms and 127 eligible for eventual emancipation under the 1804 law. In 1824, the Common Council had imposed a curfew prohibiting free people of color from being out after 10 pm on Saturday nights.

• 5. The Most Hungarian City

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  Hungarian immigrants began arriving in New Brunswick as early as 1888, drawn primarily by employment at Johnson and Johnson factories in the city. By 1915, they accounted for nearly 20 percent of the city's population. The community concentrated in what became the Fifth Ward, establishing businesses that served needs the mainstream economy did not meet. The immigration wave slowed in the early 20th century, but the community got a second surge during the Cold War when the United States processed the tens of thousands of refugees from the failed 1956 Hungarian Revolution at Camp Kilmer, in nearby Edison. By 1992, the 3,200 Hungarian residents of New Brunswick made up 8 percent of the city's population. The institutions they built remain active: Magyar Reformed Church, Ascension Lutheran Church, St. Ladislaus Roman Catholic Church, the Hungarian American Athletic Club, the Szechenyi Hungarian Community School and Kindergarten, and the Csurdongolo Folk Dance Ensemble, among many others. Street names carry the history forward. A street and a park are named after Lajos Kossuth, one of the leaders of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848. The corner of Somerset Street and Plum Street, where the first public statue of Cardinal Jozsef Mindszenty was erected, is named Mindszenty Square. A stone memorial to the victims of the 1956 revolution stands nearby. The annual Hungarian Festival on Somerset Street, held on the first Saturday of June each year, reached its 44th edition in 2019.

• 6. Demolition and the DevCo Deal

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  Beginning in 1975, Rutgers University, Johnson and Johnson, and the city government worked through the New Jersey Economic Development Authority to form the New Brunswick Development Company, known as DevCo, with a mandate to revitalize a city center experiencing severe urban decay. In 1978, Johnson and Johnson announced it would stay in New Brunswick and invest $50 million to build a new world headquarters between Albany Street, Amtrak's Northeast Corridor, Route 18, and George Street. That announcement required removing many old buildings and historic roads. The Hiram Market area, which by the 1970s had become a mostly Puerto Rican and Dominican-American neighborhood, was demolished to make way for a Hyatt hotel, conference center, and upscale housing. Johnson and Johnson guaranteed the hotel investment because Hyatt was reluctant to build in a run-down area. The new headquarters was completed in 1983, a building designed by I. M. Pei. Critics including historic preservationists, anti-gentrification advocates, and opponents of eminent domain abuses have long challenged the DevCo approach. New Brunswick is one of nine cities in New Jersey eligible for Urban Transit Hub Tax Credits, which allow developers who invest a minimum of $50 million within a half-mile of a train station to receive pro-rated tax credit. Of the 16 buildings in the city over 150 feet, nine were built in the 21st century. One project under construction is the Jack and Sheryl Morris Cancer Center, designed to be New Jersey's first freestanding cancer hospital.

• 7. Music, Art, and the Grease Trucks

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  Allan Kaprow, George Segal, Roy Lichtenstein, and several other artists who taught at Rutgers University made New Brunswick an important center for avant-garde art during the 1950s through the 1970s. This group was sometimes called the New Jersey School or the New Brunswick School of Painting. On the 19th of May, 1963, the YAM Festival brought together actions and happenings that connected to the broader Fluxus movement. The music scene produced a different kind of legacy. Rock band Looking Glass developed in New Brunswick's music scene and scored a Billboard Hot 100 number one hit with "Brandy (You're a Fine Girl)" in 1972, dedicating their debut album to the people of New Brunswick. Bon Jovi and The Smithereens also came out of the city's rock scene. Filmmaker Paul Devlin documented the New Brunswick scene of the 1980s in his first documentary, Rockin' Brunswick, released in 1983. Matt Pinfield spent more than 20 years in New Brunswick, first at Rutgers University radio station WRSU-FM and later at alternative rock station WHTG-FM, helping local alternative rock bands reach broader audiences. The independent label Don Giovanni Records was established in 2003 to document the basement scene. In March 2017, a piece in NJ.com called New Brunswick "the New Jersey scene's unadulterated, pounding heart." On the cultural side, the New Brunswick Performing Arts Center opened in September 2019, constructed at a cost of $172 million, topping 18 stories of apartments. It houses Crossroads Theatre, which in 1999 became the first African American theater to win the Tony Award for Outstanding Regional Theatre in the 33-year history of that award category. And for decades, the Grease Trucks on the College Avenue Campus served Fat Sandwiches, sub rolls loaded with fried ingredients, until they were removed in 2013 for the construction of a new Rutgers building.

• 8. Who Lives Here Now

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  The 2020 United States census counted 55,266 people in New Brunswick, the highest decennial count in the city's history. The median age was 25.0 years. Hispanic or Latino residents of any race accounted for 56.8 percent of the population. In the 2010 census, about 50 percent of residents identified as Hispanic, placing New Brunswick 14th highest among New Jersey municipalities. Many of those residents trace their roots to Puerto Rico, where migration was heaviest in the 1970s; to the Dominican Republic in the 1980s; and later to Guatemala, Honduras, Ecuador, and Mexico. Jalen Brunson, the basketball player, was born in New Brunswick in 1996. Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, born in 1999, is the world record holder in the 400 meters hurdles and competed for Team USA at the 2016 Summer Olympics. The poet Joyce Kilmer was born on the 6th of December, 1886, in a building on what is now Joyce Kilmer Avenue. Physicist Alan Guth, born in 1947, is best known for his theory of cosmological inflation. The 2007 Pulitzer Prize winning novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is primarily set in the city. One specific thread ties several centuries together: the site of the Sign of the Red Lion tavern where Rutgers University held its first classes in 1771 is now the grounds of the Johnson and Johnson corporate headquarters, a company whose roots in New Brunswick stretch back to founder Robert Wood Johnson I, born in 1845.