Courtesy, Jersey City Free Public Library
Courtesy, Jersey City Free Public Library
Early twentieth century photograph of St. Joseph's R.C. Church at Baldwin and Pavonia Avenues
Courtesy Jersey City Free Public Library
Detail of the 1873 Hopkins Atlas of Hudson County NJ showing the outline of St. Joseph's Church.
Credits: New York Society of Model Engineer's Library, Rich Taylor Collection and
Historical Maps of New Jersey site of Rutgers University
Detail from Jersey City and Bayonne Plat Book 1919 showing the outline of St. Joseph's Church, convent, school buildings, and rectory.
Credits: New York Society of Model Engineer's Library, Rich Taylor Collection and
Historical Maps of New Jersey site of Rutgers University
Courtesy, Jersey City Free Public Library
St. Joseph's Roman Catholic Parish was organized in 1856 to serve the Irish immigrant workers who labored on the Erie Railroad tunnel under Bergen Hill. The workers lived in temporary shacks, close to the arduous and dangerous occupation of blasting through the bedrock for the tunnel. The parish is aptly named in honor of St. Joseph, the patron saint of hard-working people.
In the 1850s, thousands of Irish Catholics settled in the Jersey City area following the Great Hunger that drove them from their homeland. St. Peter's Roman Catholic Church on Grand Street, the parent church of all succeeding Jersey City parishes, established two mission churches to accommodate the growing Catholic population beyond the Paulus Hook area.
The first mission, St. Mary's Chapel, was built in 1855 in the northern section of Van Vorst Township. The second, St. Bridget's Chapel, opened in 1856 for the tunnel workers on the hilltop in the newly independent municipality of Hudson City. St. Bridget's Chapel community became St. Joseph's Parish under the guidance of its first appointed pastor, Reverend Aloysius Venuta.
In 1868, St. Joseph's Church established its mission church near the intersection of Communipaw and Garfield Avenues. This mission eventually evolved into St. Patrick's Church.
St. Joseph's Church, on the southeast corner of Pavonia and Baldwin Avenues, was dedicated on Sunday, September 14, 1873. Parish lore relates that the stones used in its construction were quarried locally from the Palisades rock formation, possibly from the Erie Railroad tunnel debris. An earlier brick church stood on the same site, and the smaller building remained open for Catholic worship while the walls of the second church were constructed around it. Over the years, St. Joseph's Church has occasionally drawn public attention from the phenomenon of the unexplained lights that are said to shine from the church's bell tower.
"A Legacy of Priests and People Together " is an informative narrative history of St. Joseph's Parish. Mostly researched and edited for publication by Jersey City historian Dr. Barbara Burns Petrick, a copy of this parish history is available in the collections of the New Jersey Room of the Jersey City Free Public Library.
"The Eyes of St. Joseph's": https://youtu.be/YujoQJ47dQU
Flynn, Rev. Joseph M. Catholic Church in New Jersey. NJ: Morristown, 1904.
Gough, John Francis. St. Mary's in Jersey City: A History of the Parish 1859-1938. New York: Burr Printing House, 1938.
[Petrick, Barbara Burns]. The Story of St. Joseph Church, Jersey City, New Jersey: A Legacy of Priests and People Together. South Hackensack, N.J.: Custombook, 1979.
