The Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church was the second church founded on the McAdoo Avenue site in the Greenville section of Jersey City to minister to a newly settled German population. In 1860, New Jersey had 33,000 German-born residents, which increased to 120,000 by 1900 across the state. They were divided along denominational lines of Lutherans, Roman Catholics, and Jews.
In Greenville, the overall community of 2,789 in 1870 (US Census) had grown from 1,356 in 1865 (State Census), and the school population increased from 340 in 1863 to 950 in 1892 (McLean 90). German immigrants, who had settled in the city after the Civil War, were not as numerous as in nearby Hoboken and other New Jersey communities. They represented a small but visible presence in the predominately agricultural municipality. By 1881, Charles Ambruster recognized the German-American settlement and established Schuetzen Park between Gates and Seaview Avenues. The amusement park, celebrated for its attractions and festivals, was a popular destination for German immigrants and others living in the Greenville area.
The German-founded Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church began in 1867 with the Evangelical Association of Greenville, later the Zion Evangelical Church (1868). Its members met for services in the schoolhouse on Old Bergen Road. According to local historian Alexander McLean, “In 1877 two lots on McAdoo Avenue were bought, and a Mr. Nelson donated a lot adjoining, on condition that a Lutheran church should be built on it. In October 1877, the comer-stone of the church was laid” (302). Here they built a wood-clad church facing McAdoo Avenue for its 100 families. They had a Sunday school and a German-English day school.
Twenty years later, the congregation commissioned the German-born architect Francis A. Minuth of New York to raze the wood structure and build a larger church for its growing membership on the same footprint. Minuth designed the nine-story Renaissance (John) Kellor Building at 722 Broadway, New York City, and the Gothic-Revival German Evangelical Lutheran Church of St. Paul at 315 West 22 Street, also in New York City, in 1898.
The design of the Neo-Gothic church, constructed in 1899, on its corner location was planned as a visual anchor for the ethnic community in Greenville. The tall steeple of the nearby Roman Catholic Church of St. Paul the Apostle, on Old Bergen Road and Greenville Avenue, was the other anchor church for the predominately German congregation.
The church’s façade, refinished in red stucco in the 1960s, has four elongated pier buttresses that accent its three sections. Pier “angle” buttresses capped with a smooth stone are at the south and north corners. The copper-clad steeple sits atop the church tower at the right corner of the building. It gives the church an asymmetrical appearance in many neoclassic Gothic Revival churches. Lancet stained-glass windows with stone sills are set in the pointed arches giving greater height to the façade. The windows were made in Germany.
The façade's center section extends to a gable roof topped by a modern Celtic cross rising above the pitched roof. The pointed arch-hood molding defines the large window above the entrance and features prominent stone drip molds.
The church’s main feature is the entrance flanked by prominent pier buttresses decorated with lanterns. A white-stone-door surround overreaches the buttresses with a contemporary-style cross placed in the pitched spandrel. Above the double door is a cornice with the engraving “EV: LUTH: ZIONS KIRCHE.“ Lancet windows are enclosed in pointed arches above the cornice within the door surround.
The iconic weather vane atop the first church, once responsible for its reference as the “Rooster Church,” was salvaged and is now preserved and on display in the narthex of the new church. The interior walls beyond the narthex have a wainscot and contrast with the decorative stenciled ceiling. Chandeliers provide illumination.
At the time of the construction of the Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church in Greenville, there were two other German Lutheran churches in Jersey City. St. Paul’s Evangelical Lutheran Church at the corner of Summit and St. Paul’s Avenues was dedicated in 1886 and had 100 members and 400 Sunday school children. St. Matthew’s German Evangelical Lutheran Church at 83 Wayne Street, between Jersey Avenue and Barrow Street, is a granite and red brick Gothic-style building with brownstone trim and was founded in 1898 (McLean 301-302).
German ethnic churches experienced the hardships of both World War I and World War II. American sentiment was negative toward Germans living in the United States, and they struggled to maintain their religious communities. Also, as with many ethnic-based churches, they experienced a changing membership as their neighborhoods became more diversified.
In 2013, Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church which served the Lutheran congregation in the Greenville neighborhood for 146 years closed. In 2014, it reopened to serve the ministry of the Muungano Seventh-Day Adventist Church.
Gomez, John. “Legends & Landmarks: Zion Is a Testament to German Heritage.” Jersey Journal 20 December 2007.
McLean, Alexander. The History of Jersey City, N.J. Jersey City, NJ: F.T. Smiley and Co., 1895.
“New Church in Jersey City.” New York Times 20 June 1898.
Shaw, Douglas V. Immigration and Ethnicity in New Jersey. Trenton, NJ: New Jersey Historical Commission, 1994.
“Zion Church’s Silver Jubilee.” New York Times 2 October 1892.