Bergen Square

Bergen Square, at the intersection of Bergen Avenue and Academy Street in Jersey City, is in the southwestern part of the much larger Journal Square district. A commercial residential area, it contains an eclectic array of architectural styles including 19th-century row houses, Art Deco retail and office buildings, and is the site of the longest continually-used school site in the United States. Nearby are the Van Wagenen House (sometimes called the Apple Tree House) and Old Bergen Church, two structures from the colonial period. St. George & St. Shenouda Coptic Orthodox Church founded by early Egyptian immigrants was one of the original Coptic congregations in New Jersey.

The square and the streets around it are the site of what is considered to the oldest municipality in the state of New Jersey which was first established in 1660 as Bergen in the province of New Netherland and, in 1683, became Bergen Township. Permission to settle there was granted by the Director-General of New Netherland, Petrus Stuyvesant. A statue of Stuyvesant by J. Massey Rhind is situated on the square to commemorate the event. The square was surveyed and designed by Jacques Cortelyou and is the first example of what was to become known as a Philadelphia square in the United States. Though there no buildings from the period still standing, the names of streets (such as Vroom, Vanreypen, Newkirk, Tuers, Dekalb) and the grid they form still remain to mark the origins of the earlier village. In the immediate vicinity, there are cemeteries and the Old Bergen Church which were founded by the settlers and their ancestors.

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