Hoboken is not the only city to struggle with gentrification, but the fires that plagued the city in the 1970s and 80s displaced thousands of people, killed dozens and scarred the city’s landscape and social fabric. Princeton scholar Dylan Gottlieb recently detailed his research into that period in an article published in the Washington Post.

 

In all, he says, “Hoboken suffered almost 500 fires, nearly all the result of arson, from 1978 to 1983. More than 7,000 Latinos, many of whom had occupied desirable rent-controlled apartments, fled the city. Yet no one was ever prosecuted. Proving that a landlord was guilty of conspiracy to commit arson required evidence that they had paid an accomplice to start the fire; evidence of economic gain alone was insufficient.”

 

The Museum is pleased to welcome Gottlieb on Sunday, February 2 at 4 pm, for a talk on the same subject, “Hoboken is Burning: Gentrification, Arson, and Displacement in the 1970s.” The event is free for Hoboken Museum members (and students), and $5 for nonmembers.  The public is also invited on the Saturday evening of February 1, at 7 pm, to a screening of Nora Jacobson’s documentary, “Delivered Vacant,” which explores the same themes and was shot in the late 1980s – early 1990s. Admission to the film is $10, $5 for Museum members and students. 

 

Dylan Gottlieb is a PhD candidate in history at Princeton University and a National Fellow at the Jefferson Scholars Foundation at the University of Virginia.