Alongside our partners at the City of Jersey City, we were thrilled to cut the ribbon on a renewed Bergen Square in Jersey City on July 23, 2024, a project Street Plans first developed conceptual plans for in 2018 while writing the Let’s Ride JC Bicycle Master Plan. Since then the Street Plans team refined the original concept into a final design plan.
Bergen Square was the first urban square established in the American colonies and is the oldest continuously-inhabited European settlement in New Jersey. Once the land of the Lenni Lenape, the Dutch pushed in and started the village of Bergen around the public square in 1660. By the 1950s the square’s western quadrants operated as small parking lots, which persisted until 2023.
The renewed square includes lot of circulation, safety, and public space elements, including:
- Road diet, with protected bike lanes (completed in 2019)
- Parking lots to public space conversion
- Raised intersection
- Bus boarding islands and shelters
- Green infrastructure (rain gardens, new trees, etc.)
- A variety of new public seating options
- A decorative Lenni Lenape ribbonwork pattern around the perimeter honoring the areas original inhabitants
- New delivery and school bus loading zones
See Jersey City Times article for more.
