page_title: Hudson County, New Jersey
section_title: Urbanization and immigration
hierarchical_section_title: Hudson County, New Jersey / History / Urbanization and immigration
caption_attribution_description: English: "Emigrants coming up the board-walk from the barge, which has taken them off the steamship company's docks, and transported them to Ellis Island. The big building in the background is the new hospital just opened. The ferry-boat seen in the middle of the picture, runs from New York to Ellis Island." [Original text from Library of Congress "About This Item" page.] Español: Inmigrantes entran a los Estados Unidos a traves de la Isla Ellis, el mayor lugar de entrada a los Estados Unidos entre 1892 y 1954.
context_page_description: Hudson County, a county in the U.S. state of New Jersey, lies west of the lower Hudson River, which was named for Henry Hudson, the sea captain who explored the area in 1609. Part of New Jersey's Gateway Region in the New York metropolitan area, Jersey City is its largest city and county seat.
  As of the 2019 Census estimate, Hudson County was the fastest-growing county in New Jersey compared to 2010; the county's population was 672,391, making it the state's 4th-most populous county, an increase of 9.0% from the 2010 United States Census, when its population was enumerated at 634,266, in turn an increase of 25,291 from the 608,975 enumerated in the 2000 Census. Hudson County is the fourth-most populous county in the state. Hudson County is the geographically smallest and most densely populated county in New Jersey and the sixth-most densely populated county in the United States with 13,731.4 residents per square mile of total area in 2010, and 14,973.9 per square mile in 2017.
context_section_description: During the latter half of the 19th and early part of the 20th centuries, Hudson experienced intense industrial, commercial and residential growth. Construction, first of ports, and later railroad terminals, in Jersey City, Bayonne, Hoboken, and Weehawken (which significantly altered the shoreline with landfill) fueled much of the development. European immigration, notably German-language speakers and Irish (many fleeing famine) initiated a population boom that would last for several decades.
  Neighborhoods grew as farms, estates, and other holdings were sub-divided for housing, civic and religious architecture. Streets (some with trolley lines) were laid out. Stevens Institute of Technology and Saint Peter's University were established.
  Before the opening, in 1910, of the Pennsylvania Railroad's North River Tunnels under the Hudson, trains terminated on the west bank of the river, requiring passengers and cargo to travel by ferry or barge to New York. Transfer to the Hudson and Manhattan Railroad tubes (now PATH) became possible upon its opening in 1908. Hoboken Terminal, a national historic landmark originally built in 1907 by the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad to replace the previous one, is the only one of five major rail/ferry terminals that once dotted the waterfront still in operation. West Shore Railroad Terminal in Weehawken, Erie Railroad's Pavonia Terminal and Pennsylvania Railroad's Exchange Place in Jersey City were all razed.
  Central Railroad of New Jersey's Communipaw Terminal, across a small strait from Ellis Island and The Statue of Liberty, played a crucial role in the massive immigration of the period, with many newly arrived departing the station to embark on their lives in America. Many, though, decided to stay, taking jobs on the docks, the railroads, the factories, the refineries, and in the sweatshops and skyscrapers of Manhattan. Many manufacturers, whose names read as a "who's who" in American industry established a presence, including Colgate, Dixon Ticonderoga, Maxwell House, Standard Oil, and Bethlehem Steel. 
   
  North Hudson, particularly Union City became the schiffli "embroidery capital of America". The industry included businesses that provided embroidery machines and parts, fabrics, thread, embroidery designs, dying, chemical lace etching, and bleaching.  There were hundreds of small shops, each with one or a few machines, producing a wide array of products. Finished embroidery supplied the garment and home goods industries.
  Secaucus boasted numerous pig farms and rendering plants.
  It was during this period that much of the housing stock, namely one and two family homes and low-rise apartment buildings, was built; municipal boundaries finalized, neighborhoods established. Commercial corridors such as Bergenline, Central, Newark and Ocean Avenues came into prominence. Journal Square became a business, shopping, and entertainment mecca, home to The Jersey Journal, after which it is named, and movie palaces such as Loew's Jersey Theater and The Stanley.
caption: Immigrants arriving at Ellis Island, 1902
exif: {}