The Heights was part of the colony of Pavonia, New Netherland, the superintendent of which was the American patriarch of the Van Vorst family. A Van Vorst House built in 1742 by the family is considered to be the oldest building in Hudson County. Summit Avenue, slightly to the west follows an Hackensack Indian trail that became the main road from the villages of Communipaw and Bergen and eventually connected to the Paterson and Hackensack Plank Roads. The area comprising most of the Heights was once an independent municipality, known as Hudson City. It was incorporated as a town in 1852, and later into a city in 1855. The Town Hall, erected on Oakland Avenue, still stands today. Garrett D. Van Reipen was that city's first mayor. Hudson City, along with the Town of Bergen and the Township of Greenville, merged with Jersey City in 1873. On March 27, 1868 Hudson City became the birthplace of its most famous namesake, the new Hudson City Savings Bank, when it received a special charter from the State of New Jersey Legislature to open in what was then the small City of Hudson, New Jersey. Hudson's mayor Garrett D. Van Reipen became the first President of the small bank, which was located on Newark Avenue. By the end of the 19th Century, Hudson City Savings Bank had accumulated assets and deposits of over US$1 million. In the 1920s, the savings bank opened its second branch, and moved from Newark Avenue to 587 Summit Avenue in Jersey City, and later moved its headquarters to Bergen County. American studio in Jersey City Heights America's first motion picture industry can trace its roots to the Hudson River towns of New Jersey, especially Fort Lee. Nestor Studios began in Bayonne. Pathé, the France-based company that during the first part of the 20th century was the largest film equipment and production company in the world, established an American factory and studio facility in The Heights in 1910, the building of which still stands overlooking Paterson Plank Road. It also established the Eclectic Film Company as a subsidiary distribution company for both its American and European product. Although the Jersey City plant produced moderately popular comedies, dramas, and newsreels largely directed at the US market, Perils of Pauline was the first American-made Pathé effort to achieve worldwide success under the Eclectic banner.
Education
operates area public schools. The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Newark operates area Catholic Schools. St. Anne School was located in Jersey City Heights, and opened in 1904. Its enrollment declined by 33 in 2011 and increased by 22 in 2012. James Carroll, a member of the Jersey City Police Department and a member of the school board, Carroll stated that the 2011 decline was due to parents being afraid that the school would close. In 2011 the archdiocese considered closing the school, but a fundraising generated sufficient money to keep it open. It closed in 2012. That year the building housed the K-8 grades of the Hoboken Charter School on a temporary basis as the regular K-8 building of the charter school had a fire.
