page_title: The Ironbound
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: The Ironbound / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Looking north across Ferry Street in en:Ironbound, at former Firehouse 8 at Filmore Street on a sunny midday
context_page_description: The Ironbound is a neighborhood in the city of Newark in Essex County, New Jersey, United States. It is a large working-class, close-knit, multi-ethnic community & suburb, covering approximately 4 square miles of well maintained streets and homes. Historically, the area was called "Dutch Neck," "Down Neck," or simply "the Neck," due to the appearance of the curve of the Passaic River. The Ironbound is part of Newark's East Ward and is directly east of Newark Penn Station and Downtown Newark, and south and west of the river, over which passes the Jackson Street Bridge, connecting to Harrison and Kearny.
context_section_description: The name "The Ironbound" is said to derive from the large metalworking industry in the area or from the network of railroad tracks that surrounded the neighborhood. Balbach Smelting & Refining Company, now the location of Riverbank Park, was the second largest metal processing enterprise in the United States until its closure in the 1920s.
  The Ironbound was an industrial neighborhood in the 19th and early 20th centuries.  Workers at Benjamin Moore paints, Ballantine Beer, the Murphy Varnish Company and Conmar Zippers lived next to railroad and port workers.  The neighborhood was also home to Hensler's Beer Brewery and Pride of Newark ("P.O.N.") beer by the Feigenspan Brewery. The Ironbound was poorer than was the rest of Newark at that time. A legacy of that 19th century poverty can be seen in the neighborhood's architecture - there are very few brownstones or even brick-faced buildings in the district.  The inhabitants were considered to be in such need of help that Protestant reformers established the Bethel Mission there in 1850.
  As it does today, the Ironbound had inhabitants of many ethnic groups in the 19th century, with Germans, Lithuanians, Italians and Poles being prominent.  Lithuanians built the Sacred Heart of Jesus Church in 1894 and Trinity Church in 1902.  St. Casimir's Church was founded under Polish auspices in 1908. As an example of the size of the German community in the Ironbound, prior to World War I, Wilson Avenue was called Hamburg Place.
  Saloons were major meeting places for Ironbound workers in the era before radio and television.  A 1912 survey found 122 saloons in the neighborhood.  "The men, after eating a hasty supper in a dirty, crowded home or boarding house," a social worker noted, "quite naturally leave such unattractive surroundings to spend the evenings playing cards and drinking in a warm, well lighted saloon."
  The first Portuguese immigrants  arrived in the 1910s. By 1921 there was a large enough Portuguese population to found Sport Club Portuguese, the first of over twenty Portuguese social clubs that would call the Ironbound home.
  Galician & Jewish immigrants also settled in the Ironbound.  In the 1930s Spanish Catholics built elaborate catacombs underneath the Church of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. In the catacombs are placed lifelike wax effigies of saints and martyrs, as there are no burials there.  The walls, ceilings and floors of the catacombs are decorated with mosaics and murals.  The church above the catacombs was built in the 1850s for a German Baptist congregation, an example of ethnic succession.
  In 1983, dangerous levels of dioxin were discovered at an abandoned chemical factory in the Ironbound. The Diamond Alkali Company was largely responsible for this pollution through their heavy production of Agent Orange between 1951 and 1969. The off-site cleanup was completed by 1986, and in 1989 the site received a permanent impermeable cap.
caption: Former Firehouse 8 on Ferry Street
exif: {"Image Make": "Canon", "Image Model": "Canon PowerShot A570 IS", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "180", "Image YResolution": "180", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop 7.0", "Image DateTime": "2008:10:09 21:31:06", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered", "Image Tag 0x1001": "3072", "Image Tag 0x1002": "2304", "Image CustomRendered": "Normal", "Image ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "Image WhiteBalance": "Auto", "Image DigitalZoomRatio": "1", "Image SceneCaptureType": "Landscape", "Image ExifOffset": "312", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "1098", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "4663", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/500", "EXIF FNumber": "4", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "80", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0220", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2008:09:23 13:00:34", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2008:09:23 13:00:34", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "2", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "287/32", "EXIF ApertureValue": "4", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "11/4", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "29/5", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "2744", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "2232", "EXIF FocalPlaneXResolution": "40960/3", "EXIF FocalPlaneYResolution": "2304000/169", "EXIF FocalPlaneResolutionUnit": "2", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera"}