Central Avenue is one of Jersey City's 13 different neighborhood shopping districts.[3] with more than 240 businesses serving the area.[4]Pershing Field (named for
General John J Pershing) is a memorial park in the center of the district that was built on a military training ground. It offers a green space, baseball fields, a swimming pool and ice-skating rink. The adjacent
Jersey City Reservoir No. 3 has been preserved as a state designated wetland and park. Many stately
Victorian and
Edwardian homes distinguish the Heights, particularly along
Summit Avenue and Sherman Place.[5]
E.R.V Wright was the first Mayor of Hudson City.[10]
In the early 20th century, before
Hollywood, the American motion picture industry was mainly based in New Jersey towns along the Hudson River.[11] Chief among them was
Fort Lee, which was the
nation's first motion picture capital,[12][13] with other early film studios headquartered in neighboring towns such as Jersey City.[11] Among those was a branch of the French company
Pathé, the largest film equipment and production company in the world, whose American factory and studio facility was in established in the Heights in 1910, in a building that still overlooks
Paterson Plank Road. Pathé also established the subsidiary Eclectic Film Company, as a distributor for both its American and European product. Although the Jersey City plant produced moderately popular comedies, dramas, and newsreels largely directed at the US market, Perils of Pauline was the first American-made Pathé effort to achieve worldwide success under the Eclectic banner.[14][15][16]
The
Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Newark operates area Catholic Schools. St. Anne School was located in Jersey City Heights, and opened in 1904.[18] Its enrollment declined by 33 in 2011 and increased by 22 in 2012. James Carroll, a member of the Jersey City Police Department and a member of the school board, Carroll stated that the 2011 decline was due to parents being afraid that the school would close.[19] In 2011 the archdiocese considered closing the school, but a fundraising generated sufficient money to keep it open.[18] It closed in 2012.[19] That year the building housed the K-8 grades of the
Hoboken Charter School on a temporary basis as the regular K-8 building of the charter school was badly damaged by a fire.[20]
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abc"About the Heights". Central Avenue Special Improvement Management Corporation.
Archived from the original on December 4, 2022. Retrieved January 19, 2023.