Communipaw, First Dutch Foothold on the Hudson

Long before Jersey City existed, the Lenape called this riverside landing Communipaw, usually read as a big landing place on the other side of the river. The Dutch West India Company erected one of its first two buildings on the western shore of the Hudson here in sixteen thirty-three, and in sixteen thirty-four a Dutch superintendent established his headquarters at the settlement. For the next century and a half Communipaw remained distinctly Dutch in character, running a ferry to New Amsterdam across the river.

Then in February of sixteen forty-three, colonial director Willem Kieft ordered soldiers to massacre Lenape refugees who had taken shelter in Communipaw, killing around one hundred twenty people, women and children among them. The atrocity nearly unraveled the entire Dutch colony. Washington Irving later immortalized Communipaw in his satirical history of New York, and the old Dutch waterfront was eventually absorbed into the expanding city of Jersey City.