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By David Dayton McKean
The Central Railroad of New Jersey began in 1863 to
build its way along the edge of South Cove to the bay front
over a roadbed composed of New York City garbage and
refuse dumped from scows. For years the stenches arising
from this unusual right-of-way were wafted by summer
breezes over the southern portions of Jersey City. These
odors mingled with the dank, fetid, humid air from the
swamps and with the smoke from the railroad yards, ferries,
and factories.
In this southern portion of the city is a particularly grimy
slum area called the Horseshoe Section. It received the name
from a gerrymander in 1871. The Republican legislature,
in those Reconstruction days, sought to concentrate all the
Democratic voters in one assembly district; and to do so it
designed a district shaped somewhat like a horseshoe. It
was roughly a mile square and extended south from the
Hoboken city line and west from the Hudson River to the
foot of a hill on the west.
In a house on Tenth Street, which the humorists of the
Horseshoe called `The Ship' or `The Ark,' because after a
storm it was often surrounded by a stagnant lake, Frank
Hague was born, January 17, 1876. He was the third son
and fourth child among the eight children of John and Margaret (Fagen) Hague.
This Web version, edited by GET NJ, COPYRIGHT 2003
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