Page:History of Hudson County and of the Old Village of Bergen.djvu/51

Rh Park's Homestead. (Vroom Street and Bergen Avenue)

few inhabitants not of Dutch descent, and Dutch habit and thought were dominant. There were no buildings except dwellings and farm structures, and practically all the dwellings were of the stoutly typical long, low, comfortable Dutch style. From their ridge the Bergen men, looking down on what is now lower Jersey City with crowded factories and piers, saw a shore-land that still was largely amphibious, and when high tide covered the marshes, they could still distinguish the three "islands" that originally comprised the only solid land in that tract. Paulus Hook was the same pile of sand as in the beginning, with little except fishermen's huts here and there besides