Haunted Houses, Nobel Laureates, and the Statue of Liberty: A Journey Through New Jersey

People of different nationalities, religions and views live in New Jersey, hundreds of world famous artists, writers and musicians come from here. Each town - as a separate little America with its own traditions and characteristics, tells "Voice of America".

Manhattan is just a stone's throw from here. It is home to about 9 million people - it is the most populous, most heterogeneous and one of the most economically successful states in the United States.

A seaside vacation is what many East Coast Americans think of first when they say "New Jersey." Atlantic City with its casinos, amusement parks and roller coasters, sun loungers and striped umbrellas on sandy beaches, and in the very south - not just a resort, but a real piece of old America, where time seems to have stood still.

The legendary Cape May (Cape May) is the southernmost point of New Jersey, a fabulous town with preserved Victorian architecture. And also, according to legend, the oldest resort in the United States of America. How is this the oldest resort? Didn't people go on vacation to the sea before?

Nobody went anywhere for a week, and even more so for the weekend. Even from the nearest major city, Philadelphia, one had to get here on horseback for three days. However, in 1863, something changed. A railway was laid in Cape May, and in a couple of years it became the most fashionable and crowded resort on the east coast.

In 1878, Cape May survived a terrible five-day fire in which almost the entire old city burned down. It was then that on the site of the destroyed houses, it was decided to build elegant villas in a single Victorian style.

Thanks to the efforts of the local historical society, these houses are still considered architectural monuments, and interest in the past is fueled by all means. For example, ghost fishing.

And if the mysterious Margaret lives in the museum, then, for example, high-ranking spirits can live in the Congress Hall. Indeed, the presidents of America once stayed in this huge old hotel: Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, Ulysses Grant and Benjamin Harrison. A room in it costs from $ 859 per day plus tax.

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They say no one knows Cape May better than the historian Harry Belange.

“My grandfather worked in the post office and he was also a hairdresser,” says Harry. “My family settled here in Cape May back in the XNUMXth century. I'm one of those who are called the descendants of the Mayflower people.

The old theater, the main street - exactly the same as in the photographs of a century and a half ago, wonderful smells of oysters, crabs, buns and pancakes with maple syrup. Cape May also symbolizes the smart economy of the state, as the resort town earns $ 6,5 billion a year from tourism, attracting about 10 million tourists. Restaurants and wineries, fishing, history and culture, ecotourism, beaches and waterfront - the southern tip of the state is today one of the most sophisticated and expensive holiday destinations in the entire country.

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Ocean, beach, boardwalk, restaurants serving fresh fish and white wine, somewhere in the distance - an abandoned casino and an old carousel.

Asbury Park is the hometown of one of the oldest American cultural traditions: it is here that the so-called New Jersey sound was born. And this is about music.

The recipe for the New Jersey sound is simple: a little blues, a touch of jazz, a pinch of R&B and the image of a simple guy in a shirt and jeans who sings his uncomplicated rock and roll songs about joys and sorrows. The kings of the genre are Italian Americans, including Jon Bon Jovi and Bruce Springsteen. The latter even has an album called “Greetings from Asbury Park”.

Bruce is especially warm in New Jersey: he, the son of a local driver and secretary, has become a symbol of the American dream. He started as an ordinary yard guy with a guitar. Now he is collecting stadiums, and the world circulation of his drives amounted to 135 million.

“I think one of the most important things about Bruce is that he's a regular guy. He is very talented, he is known all over the world, but here in New Jersey he is our own. He's someone who grew out of the small world of local musicians and became successful, ”says music archive director Eileen Chapman.

Eileen is not just the director of the Bruce Springsteen Archives, she is also one of the founders of the Asbury Park Music Foundation. This organization develops the unique cultural traditions of the city and helps children from poor families to make music.

New Jersey owes Italian Americans, and there are almost 20% of them, not only for good music and the tomato-basil bias of local cuisine. He also owes them a huge layer of mass culture, without which it is difficult to imagine modern America. Danny de Vito, Travolta, Sinatra, Germanotta (this is the real name of the singer Lady Gaga) - they all have Italian roots.

One of the most famous movie locations in all of New Jersey is the home of Italian-born fictional mobster Tony Soprano, the protagonist of The Sopranos TV series. Those who watched probably remember very well that in literally every episode he went down the path in front of the house, in a white coat, to pick up a newspaper, which the postman carefully left him at the border of private property.

The Nuggers Patti and Victor Retcha lived in it for 32 years, including 8 years of filming. And recently reported that they decided to sell the property. Although experts valued the property at $ 1, the owners are confident that they will be able to sell the legendary house at least twice as expensive.

The longer you travel around this state, the deeper you immerse yourself in the history of his people, the more surprising his heterogeneity. New Jersey has many faces, it is full of contradictions, paradoxes and contrasts.

Camden is a city that has acquired the status of not only the most dangerous city in New Jersey, but also the most criminal in all of America. They say it's better now, but 5 years ago, heroin and crack were sold at every intersection. But once it was a cozy American town.

“In the early to mid-1970s, we made the famous Campbell soups here, had an Orsey recording studio, and people lived just a block or two from work,” says Brian Morton, coach of the children's basketball team. - Life was in full swing, it was a thriving city for the middle class. And then at one moment everything seemed to be turned off. ”

Everyone knows and respects Brian Morton in Camden.

“When I was 9 years old, in the early 1980s, the whole country was going through an economic depression. And cities like ours suffered the most, ”says the coach.

Many factories closed, almost half of the population lost their jobs, and drugs flooded into Camden. At the age of 9, Brian tried them, at 12 he began not only to use, but also to sell, and at 20 he was already sentenced to 20 years in prison. But who could have known that this would be the beginning of a much brighter story.

Released 12 years early, Brian returned to his Camden with a firm resolve to do something for a city where teenagers have little choice between drugs and crime. His wife came home one day and announced that they were moving: they use drugs in the city, sell drugs. And Brian said, "Let's create a baseball league here!"

Today his sports organization, Little Baseball League, is no longer small. We started with a few dozen kids, and now there are almost a thousand of them. As a result, his neighborhood, which was one of the most criminal in the city, became the safest.

Next stop is Princeton.

By the way, Princeton University at first was simply called College of New Jersey. It was founded in 1746 as one of the first colleges in the British colonies. It is hard to imagine that the first classes took place simply in the house of the founder of the educational institution, priest Jonathan Dickinson.

Today there are 75 research institutes, two national laboratories of geophysical hydrodynamics and plasma physics. Names associated with the university include Paul Krugman, John Nash, Francis Scott Fitzgerald, Haruki Murakami and Michelle Obama.

35 Nobel laureates - and Albert Einstein. In this seemingly unremarkable house, he lived from 1933 until his death in 1955.

It is especially interesting to keep track of new generations of graduates. Izzy Kassdin graduated from Princeton and at the age of 24, as a child, by the standards of business America, she headed the local historical society.

“I was then only 9 months a curator and agreed to take this position, although I was not ready for it,” says Izzy. - One wonderful woman, my mentor, told me: "Stop thinking like a woman!" According to the Harvard Business School, a woman applies for a job only when she is 100% confident in her qualifications. "

But this did not scare Izzy, on the contrary, it became a challenge for her: "Women often miss out on good opportunities because they do not think their resume fits all the requirements."

Under the guidance of Izzy, Einstein's collection of things was still turned into a small museum. They say that it was in Princeton that the scientist met his last love - the Russian aristocrat Margarita Konenkova. The locals, who found the genius still alive and were insanely proud of their neighborhood with him, said that, experiencing periods of separation from his beloved, he sat in this chair all day long and wrote her love notes and even sonnets. At the same time, he smoked his famous pipe - it is also now stored here in Princeton.

New Jersey is also called Garden State - "Garden State". Indeed, sometimes you drive through its expanses and you get the feeling that there are only greenhouses and farm fields around.

The small blue berry of the tall blueberry is officially the symbol of the state of New Jersey. First, the plant was actually discovered here on the east coast of North America. Secondly, blueberries are probably included in a hundred local recipes. Thirdly, New Jersey is consistently among the five most “blue-blue” states in America.

Gathering such a crop is manual labor. Each berry is removed from the bush with your fingers. In summer, when blueberries ripen, thousands of seasonal workers come to New Jersey.

The owner of the family business Paul Galetta proudly shows his field. His father and four brothers started a business in 1935, immediately after the Great Depression, to make ends meet. And by 1969 it was already the largest blueberry farm in the world. Business has been run by one family for 85 years. Now it's Paul, his cousin and two of their nephews. Only now the farm occupies 5,5 square kilometers. Boxes with simple fresh berries, selected and frozen, are scattered around the country for shops throughout the country.

“I always remember how my parents gave their friends a box of blueberries - and these people glowed with joy, as if they were given a million dollars,” says Paul. - But it was like that before. In the last 5 years our business has become very tough and competitive. ”

Out of 50 states, 31 now grow blueberries. And also Canada and South America.

It's time to move on. A little further north and inland, Flemington County is home to one of the most unusual places in New Jersey. Chase Brickman, 22, is the child of a typical New Jersey blue collar. Chase works in an amazing place that has turned his life into a Pixar cartoon-inspired fairytale. He is a civil engineer at Northlandz Museum Park, the longest toy railroad in the United States, 13 kilometers of endless childhood.

This surreal plasterboard world mesmerizes modern kids who are used to gadgets. It was built by another Nuggets, now a 96-year-old eccentric and dreamer Bruce Willem.

“Bruce always said that if you have a gift, it doesn't matter what - maybe you are a good electrician, or maybe an excellent locksmith, or maybe an artist, as he was - in any case you are obliged to share this gift of yours with the world. ”Says Chase.

You say "industrial state" - and your fantasy immediately draws factories to the horizon, powerful factory machines and cities that grow within industries. But New Jersey also witnessed another period in US industrial history. It would be more correct to call it romantic.

The great inventor or entrepreneur, in general, the same Thomas Edison, the legendary scientist who became a symbol of the progress of the twentieth century, whose fortune by his old age was $ 12 million, moved to New Jersey in 1876. Then there was a solid village around, but he himself was small who is a famous young enthusiast. It was like an explosion - invention after invention. 1093 patents were registered by Edison - a comparison can be made with Silicon Valley in terms of the number of ideas.

Not far from modern Newark, Edison actually founded his own research institute. Life began to boil. What has not been invented here - a telegraph, a telephone, a movie camera, a phonograph. At the turn of the XNUMXth and XNUMXth centuries, an ideal environment for mental work was created here, hundreds of people worked here and hundreds of ideas were polished.

In 1877, in New Jersey, Edison came up with a phonograph. The invention has become an incredible sensation. It is interesting what Edison would say if he had admitted that only about 100 years later it would be possible to listen to the same music using a mobile phone by pressing just one button. But we would never have this record, if not for the invention of the phonograph.

New Jersey has for many years been the most populous state in all of America. It attracts people like a magnet. Flocking here are young families who want to move from a cramped apartment to a country house, Wall Street brokers who want to pay less taxes, retirees, students, and those who have longed for life to be themselves.

“My husband said that we need to arrange a pride parade, that he cannot live in a city where there are no LGBT pride festivals,” says artist Miguel Cardenas. - And then we organized it. And now 19 years have passed ”.

Founder of Jersey City Gay Pride pop art artist Cardenas is a descendant of Cuban immigrants. Once he was building a career as an architect in Manhattan, earned a lot and lived, as he says, in the endless stress of New York. Then he dropped everything and moved to the other side of the Hudson, became an educator for children with autism at a local public school, moved to the premises of a former XNUMXth century stable, which are now being converted into apartments. And finally he became happy.

This year Jersey City has been awarded the status of the LGBT-friendly itself, that is, the city most friendly to the LGBT community in the whole state. Same-sex couples live here in something freer than even in free New York, some laws are softer here: for example, paid surrogate motherhood is allowed, which means that same-sex and barren couples can have children.

New Jersey is one of the oldest states in the United States, as if it absorbed all stages of the country's development history, from the war of independence through the golden age of industry to the present day, when the future belongs to startups, bold ideas and a competent understanding of the past.

By the way, the famous Statue of Liberty is not at all in New York - formally it stands on the territory of New Jersey. This state with its small cities, each of which is like a separate country, reminds America itself, in which there is a place for every person, if only he had his own version of the dream. Even if it is a lifelong children's railway.