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Originally published in 1939
Some of this information may no longer be current and in that case is presented for historical interest only.
Edited by GET NJ, COPYRIGHT 2003
PERTH AMBOY (117 alt., 43,516 pop.) conceals beneath a rather unkempt modern industrial surface a Colonial seaport with a history that goes back to 1651. Scarcely one descendant of an original family remains in the city, but a few old homes and historic buildings are still in usehere as a rooming house or a roadside tavern, there as a private dwelling or a particularly decrepit unit of some slum area.
Highways from New Brunswick and the industrial cities of the north meet a network of roads from central New Jersey and the Atlantic coast that converge at Victory Bridge. To the east, narrow Arthur Kill separates the city from Tottenville, Staten Island.
To motorists bound to or from the Jersey shore, Perth Amboy consists of five traffic lights that sometimes tie up week-end traffic for miles. While cars creep along or come to a prolonged halt, drivers lean out to discuss with each other this.red menace to the freedom of the road.
Passengers on the Tottenville Ferry from Staten Island get a more complete picture as the little red boat skirts the industrial water front, solid with wharves and factories, and eases into its slip at the foot of Smith Street. Beyond the slip, lining the bluff that fronts Arthur Kill and overlooks Raritan Bay, are some of the older homes, with occasional lookout towers patterned to the type of bygone architects and builders.
Leading from the labyrinth of picket-fenced corridors in the ferry house is Smith Street, rising sharply for two blocks. The rise effectively hides the city, isolating the ferry house and its environs like a quiet fishing village. There is no intimation of the industrial community just over the hill.
From this spot, where Perth Amboy itself began, Smith Street runs west as a traffic-burdened shopping center, flanked by two- and three-story brick buildings of indiscriminate architecture with stores on the street level and offices in the upper stories. The street takes on a momentary modernity as it passes Perth Amboy's lone skyscraper, the 10-story Perth Amboy National Bank at New Brunswick Avenue and State Street and finally disappears amid huge factories and blackened pitted fields beyond Convery Boulevard.
Smith Street is the backbone of Perth Amboy, creating a city out of the diverse national and economic groups that live here. Poles, Russians, Hungarians, and Czechs come out of their working class section known as "Budapest;" the Irish (and now Poles, too) leave behind the area called "Dublin;" Danes and Germans emerge from the bosoms of their nationalist groups, and meet in the anonymity of this street with the democratic name. Seventy-two percent of Perth Amboy's population consists of the foreign-born and their American-born children; Slavs predominate, with Danes and Italians next.
There are approximately ioo factories within the city, and their products range through cigars, vaseline, refined metals, neckties, lead pipe, asphalt, munitions, cables, lingerie, and auto parts, to the total value of about $274,000,000 annually. But Perth Amboy's basic industry is the manufacture of ceramic wares-tiles, bricks, terra cotta, and porcelain, made from rich local deposits of clay. Rows of kilns with tapering snouts pointing skyward are a characteristic feature of Perth Amboy and its environs.
The concentration of industry on this point of land is due to the presence of the fine natural harbor of Raritan Bay; the Raritan River, which flows into it; and Arthur Kill (or Staten Island Sound), one of the waterways serving New York City.
Perth Amboy is one of the few United States cities of its size with a volunteer fire department. Formed in 1880 after a tremendous blaze, the department quickly attracted members with a provision for lifetime exemption from taxes. The number of firemen and ex-firemen who pay no taxes has now become so great that any attempt to establish a paid department is resisted by a large bloc of non-taxpaying voters.
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