The Ironbound: Newark's Lusophone Heart

The Ironbound district of Newark is said to take its name from the railroad tracks that once ringed it, or from its heavy metalworking industry. It was a working-class neighborhood that became one of the most culturally distinctive enclaves on the East Coast. German, Lithuanian, Italian, and Polish immigrants arrived in the nineteenth century.

Then, in the early twentieth century, waves of Portuguese immigrants transformed the neighborhood, filling it with restaurants, social clubs, and the rhythms of Lusophone life. Newark earned the nickname Little Portugal. Starting in the late nineteen seventies, Brazilians followed, drawn by the existing Portuguese-speaking community.

Today the Ironbound is home to roughly fifty thousand people, and its Ferry Street corridor remains one of the densest concentrations of Portuguese and Brazilian culture in the United States.