Trenton, New Jersey

• 1. Introduction

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  Trenton, New Jersey wears two identities at once. Look at the bridge spanning the Delaware River and you will see it spelled out in lights: "Trenton Makes, The World Takes." That slogan, adopted in 1917, captured the city at its industrial peak, when its factories turned out rubber, wire rope, ceramics, and cigars for the entire nation. Today the same bridge carries commuters past a city whose biggest employer is the state government. What happened between those two Trentons, and how did a place that briefly served as the capital of the United States end up as a mid-sized city squeezed between Philadelphia and New York? Those questions run through every chapter of this story.

• 2. Quakers, Trent, and Early Roots

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  Mahlon Stacy, a Quaker from Handsworth, Sheffield, England, led the first European settlement in what would become Trenton in 1679. Quakers in England were being persecuted at the time, and the region then called the Falls of the Delaware offered the religious freedom they sought. The Lenape people, specifically the Axion band, had been the largest tribe on the Delaware River in the mid-17th century, long before any settler arrived.

  The name "Trent-towne" came from William Trent, a leading landholder who purchased much of the surrounding land from Stacy's family. By 1719 the town had adopted that name, which shortened in time to Trenton. A courthouse and jail appeared around 1720, and the Freeholders of Hunterdon County began meeting there annually.

  On the 19th of January 1764, Benjamin Franklin, then serving as Postmaster General of the colonies, appointed Abraham Hunt as the city's first postmaster. Hunt was a Lieutenant Colonel in the New Jersey militia and a prominent Trenton merchant. He was appointed again on the 13th of October 1775, shortly after the Revolutionary War began, a detail that hints at just how central Trenton had already become to the colonial project.

• 3. Washington Crosses the Delaware

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  On December 25-26, 1776, George Washington led his army across an icy Delaware River and fell upon Hessian troops garrisoned at Trenton. The victory was swift. A second engagement, the Battle of the Assunpink Creek, followed on the 2nd of January 1777. Together these two battles gave the Continental cause a desperately needed lift after a bruising stretch of defeats.

  The city's Revolutionary significance did not end on the battlefield. From November 1 to the 24th of December 1784, the Congress of the Confederation met at the French Arms Tavern, making Trenton the capital of the United States for those two months. New England and other northern states preferred Trenton as a permanent capital, but southern states prevailed in choosing a location south of the Mason-Dixon line.

  On the 21st of April 1789, Washington passed through Trenton again on his way to New York City for his first inauguration, and the city held a formal reception. The Trenton Battle Monument, a 150-foot granite column topped with a statue of Washington, was built in 1893 to mark the spot where his army launched the December 1776 attack. The monument was designed by John H. Duncan and stands at the Five Points neighborhood, still facing downtown.

• 4. The Industrial City

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  John Roebling moved his wire rope mill to Trenton in 1848, and from that mill came the suspension cables used in the Brooklyn Bridge. It was one signal moment in a much longer manufacturing story. Trenton had maintained an iron industry since the 1730s and a pottery industry since at least 1723. The completion of the Delaware and Raritan Canal and the Camden and Amboy Railroad in the 1830s pulled the pace of industrial development sharply upward. In 1845, industrialist Peter Cooper opened a rolling mill.

  Ceramics became the city's largest and most enduring industry. From the 1850s to the 1950s, scores of pottery companies operated in Trenton, earning it the nickname the "Staffordshire of America." Walter Scott Lenox founded the Ceramic Art Company in the late 19th century, which eventually became Lenox, Inc. The firm went on to design and manufacture White House china for multiple Presidents.

  The New Jersey State House was constructed in 1792, making it the third-oldest state house in the country. The building at Trenton City Hall opened in 1910, based on a 1907 design by architect Spencer Roberts. Inside, a mural by Everett Shinn traces Trenton's industrial past across the walls of the council chambers.

• 5. The Trenton Six

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  In January 1948, six Black men were arrested in Trenton for the alleged murder of an elderly white shopkeeper, accused of killing him with a soda bottle. They were arrested without warrants, denied legal counsel, and sentenced to death on the basis of what were described as coerced confessions. The case drew in both the Communist Party and the NAACP, and the legal fight stretched across a total of four trials.

  Eventually, the accused men were released, though one died in prison before that could happen. The case was later documented in the book Jersey Justice: The Story of the Trenton Six, written by Cathy Knepper. The incident stands as one of the starkest episodes in the city's history, arriving at a moment when Trenton was still growing and its manufacturing economy was near its peak.

• 6. 1968 and Its Aftermath

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  Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis on the 4th of April 1968. In the week that followed, civil disturbances spread across the country, and Trenton was among the hardest-hit cities. More than 200 businesses in Downtown Trenton were ransacked and burned. More than 300 people, most of them young Black men, were arrested on charges ranging from arson to looting to violating the mayor's emergency curfew.

  Fifteen firefighters were treated at city hospitals for injuries suffered fighting blazes or inflicted by rioters. Residents pulled false alarms and threw bricks at firefighters responding to the alarm boxes. That experience contributed to ending the use of open-cab fire engines nationally. The Trenton Fire Department fabricated temporary steel cab enclosures until new equipment could be obtained.

  The city estimated the losses to downtown businesses at $7 million, though insurance claims and settlements came to $2.5 million. The Battle Monument neighborhood bore the worst damage. North Trenton had already been losing middle-class residents since the 1950s, and the riots accelerated that departure. By the 1970s, the area had become one of the most economically distressed in the city.

• 7. A City Between Two Metropolises

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  Trenton occupies one of the more unusual geographic positions of any American state capital. It sits within 2,000 feet of a straight line drawn between Center City Philadelphia and Downtown Manhattan, threading the needle between two of the nation's largest cities. It is one of only two state capitals that border another state, the other being Carson City, Nevada. The Northeast Corridor rail line passes through the city, connecting Trenton to both Philadelphia and New York.

  That position shapes daily life. Sports loyalties in Mercer County are sharply divided, with fans of the Philadelphia Eagles arguing alongside fans of the New York Giants in the same households. Commuting patterns pull in both directions. The 2020 census counted a population of 90,871, the fifth-largest in Central Jersey and the 10th-most-populous municipality in New Jersey. Trenton is the only city in the state served by three commuter rail systems: Amtrak, NJ Transit, and SEPTA.

  The city's Hispanic or Latino population reached 45.01% in the 2020 census, up from 14.13% in 1990. The largest group within that population is Guatemalan, accounting for 14.66% of the total city population, followed by Puerto Rican at 10.09%. The annual festival celebrating Guatemala's independence on September 15 has drawn crowds in the thousands in recent years, a mark of how thoroughly the city's character has shifted in three decades.