I was at a funeral in Hackensack, New Jersey and I found that near the funeral home there was a Civil War monument. Usually I know something about the monument before I see it, but in this case I only found out about it after making the drive over the George Washington Bridge into Jersey. The monument is at The Green, an old fashioned village green established in 1696. The green was the center of the town and much of the town was built around it including the old Dutch Reformed Church and the county courthouse.
In November of 1776, the Continental Army camped on The Green. General George Washington made his headquarters at a nearby mansion after his troops were retreating from Fort Lee on the Hudson River.
The Green is located at Main Street and Washington Place.
The first thing I saw when I drove up to The Green was a Civil War artillery piece.
Many other things have change at The Green, but the cannon, which was donated by the War Department at the start of the 20th Century, has not. Here is a postcard from before 1920 and you can see the difference time has made. The fountain and the gazebo are gone.
Almost every part of The Green has changed, but the cannon remains. It’s cannon balls have been removed, likely during one of the two World War for military scrap, but otherwise the cannon had been unchanged for a hundred years.
A recently added historical sign explains The Green’s significance, at least during the Revolution. Behind the sign is the Hackensack War Memorial. Behind it is the Hackensack War Memorial.
In front of the cannon is the Hackensack Soldiers and Sailors Memorial. It is inscribed:
Dedicated May 30, 1908
to the memory of the
Soldiers and Sailors who
lost their lives in the
wars of the United States.
Because of the date of the monument and because it is placed in front of the artillery piece it is likely that it was placed to memorialize the veterans of the Civil War.
In the photo below you can see the street scene from the cannon. On the right is the county courthouse, in the middle is a monument to General Enoch Poor who died during a duel during the Revolution, and to the left is the Old Dutch Church. The church was built in 1791, bit it has been a worship ground for the Dutch since the late 1600s. General Poor is buried in its cemetery.
From the markings on the gun barrel you can see this cannon was made in 1865 at West Point Foundry (“W.P.F.). I was not able to learn if it was used in battle during the Civil War. I visited the West Point Foundry last year. This was one of the largest producers of ordinance in the United States and the Parrott Gun was invested there.
The War Memorial (below), while it is dedicated to all people who served in America’s wars, was put up at the end of World War I and its images highlight the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, and World War I.
Sculptor Charles Henry Niehaus (1855-1935) created the monument. Niehaus was born to German immigrant parents in Ohio. He went to Germany to study sculpture and his first notable work was of James Garfield that is in Statuary Hall at the United States Capitol. A total of eight of his works are in the nation’s capitol. He also did sculptures of Abraham Lincoln, William McKinley, David Farragut, Nathan Bedford Forrest, Benjamin Harrison, and other sculptures with Civil War themes. In addition to the U.S. Capitol, his sculptures are owned by the Library of Congress and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, among many others.
The monument depicts a young man of Hackensack.
In 2016, the monument went through restoration. The restorer noted the high degree of damage to the bas reliefs in the pedestal. According to the restorer, acid rain had worn the granite down and had erased the high detail in the bas reliefs. The city said it did not want to recarve the details because it would have undermined the structural integrity of the base.
The front of the pedestal depicts General Washington leading Revolutionaries during the War of Independence. Washington is shown at the nearby Battle of Monmouth. At the top are inscribed the words “Erected in 1924 by the people of Hackensack in Memory of its soldiers and sailors who fought in the wars of the United States of America.”
One the right side is a scene depicting Robert E. Lee surrendering to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House.
Unfortunately, the Civil War scene has been worn down more than the other three scenes. The city did put on a preservative to stabilize the base.
Behind the statue is a depiction of Teddy Roosevelt with the Rough Riders at the Battle of San Juan Hill.
To the left of the statue is a depiction of World War I soldiers.
While the pedestal has suffered over the last one hundred years, the statue has not lost any of its luster. The park and its surrounding historic properties are definitely worth a visit.
During the Civil War, Hackensack had a population of 3,558. In its earlier periods of settlement, most Europeans were Dutch. In the 1700s, many British came in. By the time of the Civil War, Irish and German immigrants increased the population by 57% between 1850 and 1860.
Hackensack is still an immigrant town, with a third of its population coming from Latin America. After I visited the monument I went for dinner with the aggrieved family from Equator to the Noches de Colombia. The food was good and relatively affordable with most dinners priced between $20 and $30 dollars.
All color photos (except the postcard) are by Pat Young.
To see more sites Pat visited CLICK HERE
Sources:
History of Bergen County, New Jersey, 1630-1923 by Frances Augusta Westervelt (1923)
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