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Research dossier · Places & Architecture

Exchange Place, Jersey City

human settlement in Jersey City, New Jersey, United States of America

Architectural plans, a scale model, maps and brass measuring instruments
Places and architectureInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 14, 2026
Entity authorityQ5419579 ↗
Source-derived summary

Exchange Place is a district of Downtown Jersey City, New Jersey that is sometimes referred to as Wall Street West due to the concentration of financial companies that have offices there. The namesake is a square, about 200 feet long, at the foot of Montgomery Street at the waterfront of the Hudson River. This square was created by landfilling the shore at Paulus Hook, and has been a major transportation hub since the colonial era.

Vicinity

A high concentration of highrise office and residential buildings in the city are located in the district radiating from Exchange Place, which since the 1990s has overtaken Journal Square as Hudson County's major business district and become a major business center along the redeveloped waterfronts in the Port of New York and New Jersey. The Mack-Cali building is host to several nesting sites for peregrine falcons. The Hudson River Waterfront Walkway crosses Exchange, the other side of which is J. Owen Grundy Park, extending into the Hudson River.

The Katyń Memorial by Polish-American artist Andrzej Pitynski is the first memorial of its kind to be raised on American soil to honor the dead of the Katyń Forest massacre. In early May 2018, Holocaust survivor Edward Mosberg co-signed a letter asking Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop not to remove the Katyń Memorial from Exchange Place in the city, writing: "The memory of the Katyn massacre is an important part of the memory and memories of the Holocaust and we encourage you to reconsider your decision to remove this monument."

To the south are New York Waterway's Paulus Hook Ferry Terminal, and the two tallest buildings in New Jersey; the Goldman Sachs Tower and 99 Hudson. The Colgate Clock, promoted by Colgate-Palmolive as the largest in the world, faces Battery Park in lower Manhattan. The clock, which is 50 feet (15 m) in diameter with a minute hand weighing 2,200 pounds, was erected in 1924 to replace a smaller one that was relocated to a plant in Jeffersonville, Indiana.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Exchange Place, Jersey City” is human settlement in Jersey City, New Jersey, United States of America. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Exchange, Place and Jersey, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA strong orientation record where physical form, institutional use and historical geography need to be read together. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2018, 1924—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Exchange, Place and Jersey is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “human settlement in Jersey City, New Jersey, United States of America” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Maps, plans, fabric surveys and administrative records can establish how the site’s name, extent and function changed over time. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 14, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5419579. Authority coordinates are 40.716, -74.033. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2018 and 1924.

Critical limits

A single description cannot reconcile every naming convention, rebuilding phase or administrative transfer associated with a place. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Treat names, boundaries and functions as historically changeable. Maps, plans, inventories and administrative records can clarify what the place meant at different dates.

Best used for
  • Historic place names
  • Jurisdictional context
  • Routes into maps and plans
Verify next

Contemporary maps, plans, listed-building records, estate papers and the responsible local or national archive.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Exchange Place, Jersey City”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Exchange Place, Jersey City primary sources, Exchange Place, Jersey City archive and Exchange research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Exchange Place, Jersey City”?
  2. Which authority defined the place, boundary or structure at the relevant date?
  3. What physical evidence or contemporary plan supports the description?
Subject index

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Exchange Place, Jersey City” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.