Jersey City's Historic Marion Neighborhood Walking Tours at 11am and 2pm

Join our historians for an exploration of the historic Marion neighborhood, a Jersey City architectural secret just west of Journal Square. Join architectural historian and preservation activist John Gomez for an an exploration of the historic Marion neighborhood, a Jersey City architectural secret just west of Journal Square! The 11:00am to 1:00pm tour will meet outside the Starbucks at the Journal Square PATH Station. The 2:00pm to 4:00pm tour will meet outside the Starbucks at the Journal Square PATH Station. Depending on availability, tours may include interior access of some historic sites in the area. Our tours are rain or shine; be sure to dress accordingly for the weather. Attend our newly-launched architectural walking tour of the historic Marion neighborhood, a true Jersey City architectural secret just west of Journal Square! Join our architecture tour guides and historians as we explore Marion's singular sites and destinations, including: • Quiet, tree-lined residential streets — some featuring deep dead-end passages that meet high cemetery walls; many with sunken front and rear gardens and vine-covered patios; others leading from main thoroughfares that merge into vehicular ovals; and a few that lead to back, fenced-off subway line perimeters behind factory buildings and new residential construction; • Recently renovated pocket parks and playgrounds, including a converted bocce ball court erected over a century ago by the neighborhood's influx of Italian immigrants; • Public library reading rooms, long used and long cherished by Marion residents; • Pulicly-accessible garden apartment plazas, green triangle spaces, and serene public-private partnership community gardens; • Storefront legacy businesses, many owned and managed by families from the neighborhood; • An Italian-American civic club and other surviving reminders of the neighborhood's historically Italian-American past; • Schoolhouses erected in the early-to-mid-20th century that are still in use as educational centers and institutions for young 21st-century scholars; • Mammoth industrial landmarks transformed into expansive residential communities and artist studio spaces; • A still-in-use steel footbridge built in the 1950s that traverses live rails and is now in the much-talked-about area for a new PATH station; • Former horse-stable-turned-carport courts and driveways; • An intact gold-brick factory driveway; • Side-by-side houses of worship encompassing Catholicism, Coptic Christian Orthodoxy, Islam, and Buddhism. These back-to-back, separate admission curated tours of Marion's architectural and cultural treasures are long overdue, and the Jersey City Landmarks Conservancy is proud to organize and present them to the public for the first time, with additonal Marion tours planned for the months ahead! Join us!