INTRODUCTION
AT the close of the nineteenth century, the little city of Bayonne, New Jersey, still retained its early character of a residential center. Located on a low, narrow peninsula which extends along the west side of upper New York Harbor it was rather sparsely covered with little individual wood houses, set in the familiar pattern of rectangular streets, laid out in a multitude of long narrow blocks, as nearly alike as possible—the traditional American town. Slowly growing, it was taking its place as a suburb of New York City. For the most part, industry had left it undisturbed. Self-contained and homogeneous, Bayonne had few serious problems.
How industry transforms a city
But the twentieth century brought a profound change. The Aladdins of industry noticed Bayonne's position on the shore line of the Port of New York, remarked the main line of the Central Railroad of New Jersey running along its water-front, and they saw the big "Hook," a huge tract of low waste land which juts into the harbor opposite Staten Island, along the ship channel into Newark Bay. This combination of transportation routes and undeveloped land meant opportunity. The Aladdins rubbed their magic lamps and behold!—a new Bayonne arose. A collection of huge industrial plants, built by corporations of national and international scope was placed on the Bayonne peninsula, with wharves, avenues, business buildings, schools, churches, institutions and recreational facilities, together with the transportation lines required to serve all this complicated machinery. And lastly, the army of workers arrived, who were to make the machinery go.
In the quick transformation, the Hook section went to the oil companies—the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey, and the Gulf Oil, the Vacuum Oil and the Tidewater Oil Companies, whose tankers could come and go from the wharves at their refineries to all the ports of the world. Manufacturing plants like the International Nickel Company, the American Radiator
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