Newark

Newark is a port city in northern New Jersey, on the Passaic River and Newark Bay a short distance west of New York City. Newark Liberty International Airport, on its southern edge, opened in the 1920s as the first major airport of the New York area.

Robert Treat led Puritans from Connecticut to the west bank of the Passaic, where they founded the town in 1666. Seth Boyden developed patent leather and malleable iron in Newark in the early 19th century, and tanning, jewelry and brewing made the town a manufacturing center before its city charter in the 1830s. John Wesley Hyatt produced celluloid, one of the first plastics, in Newark from the 1870s. Thomas Edison ran workshops in the city, building stock tickers, before he moved to Menlo Park.

Branch Brook Park, planned by the Olmsted Brothers firm, has thousands of cherry trees that blossom each April. The Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart, a French Gothic church begun in the late 19th century, took decades to finish and was visited by Pope John Paul II in 1995. The singer Whitney Houston grew up in the city and first sang in a Baptist church choir there. Philip Roth, born in Newark, set many of his novels in the Jewish neighborhood of his childhood.

Prudential Financial, the insurer, has its headquarters downtown, where it began by selling small life insurance policies to working families. Panasonic moved its North American headquarters to a tower near Newark Penn Station, and Audible, the audiobook company, is based in the city as well. The Ideal X, the first commercially successful container ship, sailed from Port Newark in the 1950s, and the port grew into a large container terminal shared with neighboring Elizabeth.