Hoboken is Burning

Hoboken is not the only city to struggle with gentrification, but the fires that plagued the city in the 1970s and 80s displaced thousands of people, killed dozens and scarred the city’s landscape and social fabric. Princeton scholar Dylan Gottlieb recently detailed his research into that period in an article published in the Washington Post.

 

In all, he says, “Hoboken suffered almost 500 fires, nearly all the result of arson, from 1978 to 1983. More than 7,000 Latinos, many of whom had occupied desirable rent-controlled apartments, fled the city. Yet no one was ever prosecuted. Proving that a landlord was guilty of conspiracy to commit arson required evidence that they had paid an accomplice to start the fire; evidence of economic gain alone was insufficient.”

 

In February 2020, the Museum welcomed Gottlieb for a talk on the subject, “Hoboken is Burning: Gentrification, Arson, and Displacement in the 1970s,” and presented a screening of Nora Jacobson’s documentary, “Delivered Vacant,” which explores the same themes and was shot in the late 1980s – early 1990s.

 

The 1992 film chronicles eight years of housing wars in Hoboken, NJ, in the throes of its conversion from mostly affordable blue-collar city to a sought-after bedroom community for white-collar New Yorkers. It features a real life cast of long time residents, newly arrived yuppies, tenant organizers, real estate developers, immigrants from around the world and the wackiest mayor in America. 

 

In late 1980s, a battle raged between longtime residents of Hoboken’s and the developers who sought to convert their inexpensive housing into high-priced rental and condominium units. Jacobson spent nearly a decade investigating the issue for her critically acclaimed documentary, “Delivered Vacant,” focusing her lens on the city’s pro-affordable housing mayor, Tom Vezzetti, and a cast of locals ranging from elderly and immigrant residents being forced from their homes to aspiring artists who rely on the area’s cheap rents.

 

The film is available for viewing on one of the Museum’s monitors, or a DVD can be ordered from the filmmaker’s website, www.offthegridproductions.com .

 

Click here to visit Dylan Gottlieb’s website and find links to articles on Hoboken and other topics.

 

Click here to visit the “Hoboken Fire Victims Memorial Project” Facebook page to learn more about the group’s efforts to raise funds for a plaque honoring the victims and the many people displaced by the terrible wave of arson in the 1970s and 1980s. 

 

Click here to donate to the Fire Victims Memorial Project fundraising initiative. 

 

Click here to visit the Museum’s online Collections page to learn more about the arson wave through the scrapbooks of the group “Por la Gente,” which were donated to the Hoboken Historical Museum’s collections by Tom Olivieri, a long-time activist and advocate for affordable housing in Hoboken. 

 

Click here to read the oral history chapbook, “When People Got Together and There Were Feasts,” based on Tom Olivieri’s recollections of growing up and living in Hoboken.

 

Click here for a related chapbook based on Angel Padilla’s recollections of growing up in Hoboken’s Puerto Rican community in the mid to late 1900s, “We Were Not as They Thought.”