Tonnele Avenue begins at a trickle in Jersey City at Van Reypen Street near Journal Square, but it soon becomes a pedal to the metal speedway hurtling north along the edge of the Meadowlands to Bergen County. The road was named for New Yorker John Tonnele (1807-1852), the first Roman Catholic member of the NJ state legislature.
HUMBLE BEGINNING
previous post
6 comments
Businesses along the avenue, along with the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail station, spell John’s name Tonnelle, locally pronounced Tunnelly.
That triangular building on the right was quite in the news the week after 9/11. It contained an apartment rented by two Muslim men who had suddenly left town just before the attacks. They were soon apprehended on an Amtrak train in Fort Worth, I believe, and later it was found they left so hastily because they had embezzled thousands from the Hudson newsstand at Newark’s Penn Station, where they worked. I remember reading articles by reporters who went to their Tonnele address looking for clues, before they were caught. One looked through the windows of their apartment and described it, and the building in general, as very shabby.
What part of New York is this “Forgotten NY” place?
Apparently You can write but you can’t read and/or you hate NJ.
If you actually read everything, you would have known that this was Jersey City, and not everything here Kevin does is just in NYC only.
This has some sentimental attachment to me. My father and grandfather ran an upholstery business for over 50 years on Newark Ave to the south of that location. Although architecturally the pickings are slim, you can find some great early 20th century apartment buildings on the opposite side of Kennedy Blvd behind the grand old Loew’s Theatre which is preserved though it still could use more funding. Maybe a Forgotten NYC Metro section would be good. If you want some input on an entry, contact me. I spent many weekends in the Journal Square area helpiong my Dad at the shop and lived in Jersey City until I was 4. Also raised in Kearny which was the town across from the Meadowlands – it was pretty to see the few slices of wetlands that remained change their colors through the seasons.
As a sidenote, a huge article for Forgotten NY could be the wetland parks in the NYC area – Jamaica Bay Wildlife refuge in Queens, Dekorte State Park in the Meadowlands in Lyndhurst/North Arlington area are two spots i know of . They are very popular with serious birdwatchers and each offer a surreal serenity with nature as in sight are the highways and buildings of the NYC to either the East or North.