Jersey City Came One Step Closer to Seeing a New Historic District Near Sherman Place

It’s not uncommon for Laura Foord to overhear compliments from passersby on the grand Queen Anne and gingerbread Victorian homes in her neighborhood in Jersey City Heights.

“They say, ‘Oh my God, I never knew this place existed in Jersey City,’” Foord said. “And you can see that it makes people happy.”

Foord, who shared her story at a Jersey City Landmarks Conservancy event at the Apple Tree House in May, has been one of the leaders in her neighborhood advocating for a proposed Sherman Place Historic District, which came one step closer to coming to fruition. A collection of about 200 historic buildings near Sherman Place could become the first historic district in the Heights. 

“This would be a big win for preservation in the Heights and a large recognition for a lot of the architectural integrity that exists in the Heights, not just in this neighborhood,” said Maggie O’Neil, Jersey City’s historic preservation specialist. “You all moved to this area for a reason. I would hope that one of the reasons is you liked the way that it looked — being in a historic district protects those things.”

The designation ultimately needs a vote from the Historic Preservation Commission, the Planning Board, and the City Council. However, before that, the State Historic Preservation Office requires that the city government hold a series of community meetings to gauge support.

“This is where we are right now,” O’Neil said. “If we get to the point where there’s enough support for this proposal, staff will submit an application to the historic commission to be reviewed by them.”

The community meeting in June is part a seven-year effort that began in 2019 when the city’s planning division deemed the neighborhood potentially eligible for historic district status. The Sherman Place Block Association began organizing to move the process along. It didn’t hurt that Paul Amatuzzo, a member of Jersey City’s HPC, lives in the neighborhood. This culminated in the City Council voting to fund an architectural study which was published in 2024. 

What the study found was a fascinating collection of largely Victorian homes. Although many are located on Sherman Place, which runs down the center of the proposed historic district, others homes on Summit Avenue, Sanford Place, and JFK Boulevard are included. The pre-1873 homes at 943 Summit Avenue and 126 Sherman Place are among the oldest in the study.

Since last year, the boundaries of the proposed historic district have shrunk somewhat in order to remove some non-contributing buildings and “keep the overall strength of historic district sound,” O’Neil said.

 “We think this is overall a good change,” she said. “We think it’s a lot more manageable and hopefully it will appease people who were not necessarily supportive of the district.”

The last historic district to be designated in Jersey City was West Bergen-East Lincoln Park in 2015. Around that time, developers were buying the historic homes in her neighborhood just to demolish them, subdivide them, and build new homes, such Bayonne boxes, that didn’t fit the character of the neighborhood, according to Charlene Burke, who helped mobilize neighbors to “protect some of our historic houses.”

 “It’s been something that neighborhoods fought against but there’s only so much of a voice that a community has,” she said.

The past seven years have seen similar intrusions in the proposed Sherman Place Historic District. St. John’s German Methodist Church was demolished in 2019 and Grace Lutheran Church was demolished in 2020, both would have been included in the original proposed historic district. A home at 85 Sherman Place was also demolished and 32 Sherman Place has been part of a seemingly unending legal battle. But the Zoning Board recently voted to uphold the HPC’s demolition denial.

 “We still have a few months before we can breathe a sigh of relief,” Foord said. “I believe we’re going to be historic but it’s not yet done.”