1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Bayonne (New Jersey)

BAYONNE, a city of Hudson county, New Jersey, U.S.A., occupying the peninsula (about 51/2 m. long and about 3/4 m. wide) between New York harbour and Newark Bay, and immediately adjoining the south boundary of Jersey City, from which it is partly separated by the Morris Canal. It is separated from Staten Island only by the narrow strip of water known as the Kill van Kull, and it has a total water frontage of about 10 m. Pop. (1890) 19,033; (1900) 32,722, of whom 10,786 were foreign-born (3168 Irish, 1868 Russian, 1656 German); (1910) 55,545. Land area about 4 sq. m. Bayonne is served by the Central of New Jersey and by the Lehigh Valley railways (the latter for freight only), and by electric railway lines to Newark and Jersey City. The principal public buildings are the city hall, the public library, the post-office and the city hospital. Besides having a considerable share in the commerce of the port of New York, Bayonne is an important manufacturing centre; among its manufactures are refined petroleum, refined copper and nickel (not from the ore), refined borax, foundry and machine-shop products, tubular boilers, electric launches and electric motors, chemicals (including ammonia and sulphuric and nitric acids), iron and brass products, wire cables and silk goods. In 1905 the value of its factory product was $60,633,761, an increase of 57·1% over that of 1900, Bayonne ranking third in 1905 among the manufacturing cities of the state. It is the principal petroleum-distributing centre on the Atlantic seaboard, the enormous refineries and storehouses of the Standard Oil Company, among the largest in the world, being located here; there are connecting pipe lines with the Ohio and Pennsylvania oil fields, and with New York, Baltimore, Philadelphia and Washington. Much coal is shipped from the city. Bayonne, which comprises several former villages (Bayonne, Bergen Point, Pamrapo and Centerville), was settled about 1665–1670 by the Dutch. Originally a part of Bergen, it was set off as a township in 1861. It was chartered as a city in 1869.