Jersey City 1940-1960: The Dan McNulty Collection

By Kenneth French

Photographer Dan McNulty was a Jersey City resident who spent most of his time working in his family’s funeral home. McNulty’s photography was a mere sideline, but this fact did not affect the high artistic quality of the images of the city that he produced during the 1940s and ’50s. During the two decades of McNulty’s work, Jersey City experienced many changes. The powerful political machine of Mayor Frank Hague was brought down after thirty years
in 1949 by the reform team of John V. Kenny, and this period also saw the end of the city’s success in the railroad industry. In the 1950s, the first large housing projects were constructed in the city; other sweeping developments in this sphere would follow in the 1960s. McNulty documented these changes and others that resulted during this twenty year period through dramatic photographs of vacant railroad terminals, dynamic commercial and residential districts, successful factories and manufacturing plants, and significant WPA projects such as the Jersey City Medical Center and Roosevelt Stadium.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
• Release date: Nov 1, 1997
• ISBN: 9781439616055

Kenneth French

A native of Jersey City, Kenneth French is also the author of Jersey City, 1940-1960: The Dan McNulty Collection. He is the librarian at St. Peter's Preparatory School and the former head librarian at the New Jersey Room of the Jersey City Public Library. A longtime supporter of the preservation of local historic sites, such as the Loew's Jersey Theater, the Apple Tree House, and the Bergen Arches, Kenneth French is pleased to present this look at the railroads in Jersey City and Hoboken.

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Introduction

Jersey City in the 1940s and 1950s was at one of the peaks of its development. Having benefited tremendously from the building projects of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal programs, the city had an enormous new public hospital and a new baseball stadium that received nationwide attention when Jackie Robinson played his first game in organized baseball there in 1946. There were several large railroad lines that ended at the waterfront, bringing commuters through the city to the ferries that would carry them across the river to Manhattan. Trolley and bus lines helped local residents get around. Industry was at a high point, with companies producing everything from cleaning products to food to pharmaceuticals. People left their own neighborhoods less frequently then, since every part of town had its own shopping area, businesses, and movie theaters.

Jersey City has always had an interesting political history as well (to say the least). The late 1940s saw some sweeping changes in the city’s political structure. The resignation of Mayor Frank Hague and the subsequent defeat of his organization had repercussions that were felt for many years. To this day, Hague’s name evokes strong opinions among city residents who remember him.

Politics and the development of the city have always, of course, gone hand in hand. Many of the building projects of the 1930s were a result of Frank Hague’s political power and alliance with FDR’s administration. Hague’s successors in the 1950s began other large-scale building projects, including the St. John’s and Gregory apartment complexes, several public housing projects, and the New Jersey Turnpike Extension. Still, in comparison to the continuously changing landscape of Manhattan across the river, Jersey City looks remarkably similar today to the way it did in the 1950s.

From the 1930s through the 1960s, a local photographer quietly made his way through the city’s streets and left a number of photographs that beautifully document the city at this time. Dan McNulty ran a funeral home at the corner of Montgomery and Brunswick Streets, diagonally across from St. Bridget’s Catholic Church. He inherited the business from his father, Daniel J. McNulty, who died in 1935 and was the third generation in his family to run it. Dan McNulty, however, was not particularly happy as a funeral director. His mother wanted to keep it a family business, though, and his brother Harold had even less interest in it than he did.

What Dan McNulty wanted to do was take photographs, and he took every opportunity to do so. At times, he did work for the Associated Press and the Jersey Journal. At one time, he was called on by the AP to photograph the king and queen of England at Sandy Hook. Also, as one can see in many of the pictures included here, he did some real estate photography. The photographs showing a man holding a white flag indicating a specific property could have been done for tax assessment, surveying, or some other real estate-related purpose. It has not even been established yet whether the man with the flag is McNulty himself.

Photography was more than a sideline for McNulty. The quality of his work alone is proof of that. The lighting, texture, and crispness of his pictures show the amount of time and care he put into his work. He kept a darkroom in the funeral parlor and could be found there as often as in the rest of the building. He finally gave up the business sometime after World War II. It had been quite successful and the money it generated for him and his father allowed him to spend more time with his camera while occasionally lending a hand at the Lawrence Quinn Funeral Home on Academy Street.

I do not know much else about Dan McNulty; most of this information I only learned recently. One of my hopes for this book is that it will call attention to McNulty and his work. I think that his work measures up to the best urban photography in the twentieth century. I also hope that from the discussions generated by this book I can get more information about him, hear from his surviving family, and perhaps see more of his work. Anyone with information is welcome to contact me at the Jersey City Public Library.

One of the things about Jersey City that McNulty seemed to grasp is that it was and is a city of neighborhoods. He went back to the same areas and rephotographed them, sometimes over a period of years. Though there have been many changes in Jersey City in the decades since these photographs were taken, this sense of neighborhood structure is still very much evident in the city. My hope is that this book will appeal not only to those