VIDEO: Over the years, Hoboken has evolved from a gritty, working-class enclave to a town with the highest rents in the state of New Jersey. Hoboken’s Hispanic population has dropped by 50% during that time.
The gentrification of Hoboken wasn’t just the result of market forces and economics. It was fueled by evictions, intimidation, violence, arson and murder.
As many as 55 people died in a series of fires in Hoboken between 1978 and 1983 – many of them children and the impoverished. Hundreds more were displaced by fires that were intentionally set.
Newspaper headlines of the era described an epidemic of arson. On Jan. 21, 1979, 21 people were killed and 21 more injured in a fire at 131 Clinton St. On Oct. 25, 1981, 11 were killed, including a 9-year-old child, in an unsolved arson at the El Dorado apartment complex on Washington Street.