Hamilton Park Neighborhood & Historic District

The centerpiece of the Hamilton Park neighborhood is the namesake Victorian era park situated between Eighth and Ninth Streets and surrounded by a historic preservation district. The park is lined with both brownstones in addition to more oddly designed nineteenth century buildings. Contrasting the streets around Van Vorst Park which maintain a certain unifying similarity between each brownstone, the buildings around Hamilton have greater variety and unique flare.

The Hamilton Park neighborhood is situated roughly equidistant from the Grove Street and Pavonia PATH stations, about a ten minute walk from the center of the park. The north side of the neighborhood is bound by the twelfth street embankment which abates noise from the Holland Tunnel entrance.

The southern border of the neighborhood is the Sixth Street embankment, which serves also as the northern border to the Harsimus Cove neighborhood. In essence, traveling south along Jersey Avenue from Hamilton park is a continuous stretch of historic preservation districts up to the edge of the city where Liberty Harbor is currently under construction.

The eastern border of the neighborhood is generally considered the Newport Mall parking garages which further segregate the new waterfront from the historic neighborhoods. The Newport mall extends from Sixth Street to the Eleventh Street overpass which feeds traffic from the Turnpike directly into the mall. The presence of the mall has also amputated the Newport high-rises from the neighborhoods around Hamilton Park.

Currently, there are plans to renovate Hamilton park, a project not undertaken in more than thirty years. The Hamilton Park Association has spearhead these efforts and are organizing final proposals. Improvements to the park will include new Victorian style lampposts, benches, new walkways, a dog run, updated playgrounds, landscaping, a fountain, and restoration of the tennis and basketball courts.

In addition, for many years St. Francis Hospital bordered the park to the east along McWilliams Place. However, the old hospital buildings-- a conglomerate of structures from a myriad of time periods-- is currently being remodeled, removed, resurfaced, and renovated into apartments and retail shops. The main task of the renovation is to remove the facades from buildings built in the 1960's and 1970's and restore a look more suited to the historic neighborhood. In addition, the developer is restoring Pavonia Avenue as well as an older building on the site from the 1920's.