Van Vorst Park
Jersey City NJ
by Melissa
2013

Leave your story better than you found it ~M.H. Ward

QUOTE: POSITIVE Energy

Van Vorst Park is a neighborhood in the Historic Downtown of Jersey City, Hudson County, New Jersey, centered on a park sharing the same name. The neighborhood is located west of Paulus Hook and Marin Boulevard, north of Grand Street, east of the Turnpike Extension, and south of The Village and Christopher Columbus Drive. Much of it is included in the Van Vorst Park Historical District. The park was a centerpiece of Van Vorst Township, a township that existed in Hudson County from 1841 to 1851. Van Vorst was incorporated as a township by an Act of the New Jersey Legislature on April 12, 1841, from portions of Bergen Township. On March 18, 1851, Van Vorst Township was annexed by Jersey City.
The name Van Vorst comes from a prominent family in the area, the first of which arrived in the 1630s as superintendent of the patroonship Pavonia, the earliest European settlement on the west bank of the Hudson River in the province of New Netherland. His homestead at Harsimus, plus others at Communipaw, Paulus Hook, Minakwa, Pamrapo were later incorporated into Bergen. His namesake and eighth generation descendant, Cornelius Van Vorst, was the twelfth Mayor of Jersey City serving from 1860 to 1862.
Like Harsimus Cove and Hamilton Park to the north and Bergen-Lafayette to the southwest, the neighborhood contains nineteenth century rowhouses and brownstones. It is home to the Jersey City Medical Center, James J. Ferris High School (named for the Jersey City citizen who laid the foundation of the Hudson and Manhattan Railroad Powerhouse with his firm Stillman, Delehanty and Ferris), and Old Colony Shopping Plaza. Landmarks include Barrow Mansion and Dixon Mills.



Van Vorst Park is the centerpiece of the downtown Jersey City neighborhood and historic district that bears the same name. Called “one of the most formal of Jersey City’s parks,” it was originally landscaped by a local florist and horticulturist Peter Henderson in 1851. The park has been described as an example of a town square similar to Washington Square Park in lower New York City. Occupying the entire rectangular city block between Montgomery Street, York Street, Jersey Avenue, and Barrow Street, Van Vorst Park is lined with ornate brick and brownstone rowhouses from the late 1800s that showcase a variety of popular Victorian architectural styles.
The park was renovated for $2 million in 1999 through the efforts of an association called the Friends of Van Vorst Park (FVVP). The park includes a gazebo, viewing fountain, and playground; plantings and trees provide a small verdant oasis along the walking paths. The association renovated the park according to the intended goals of its benefactor Cornelius Van Vorst: a passive, Victorian park at the center of a rapidly growing neighborhood that would honor the centuries the Van Vorst family owned and developed this area, and perhaps he also wanted to honor the soon to vanish open land itself.
For more information, go to the Van Vorst Park Association website.