Where to Stay in Bayonne, New Jersey

What is Bayonne known for?

The cruise port on the New York Bay side gives Bayonne a working waterfront, and passengers board there for voyages that begin within sight of New York City. Churches carry much of the rest of the city's fame, from Sacred Heart Church to the First Reformed Dutch Church of Bergen Neck. A tall memorial stands at the water.

To the Struggle Against World Terrorism rises above the harbour on the eastern shore of the peninsula.

What are the main landmarks in Bayonne?

One monument stands above the rest. To the Struggle Against World Terrorism rises on the New York Bay shore, a memorial that draws visitors who otherwise pass Bayonne on the way to somewhere else. Church buildings supply the rest of the register, among them Sacred Heart Church, Calvary Presbyterian Church, and the First Reformed Dutch Church of Bergen Neck.

Cape Liberty Cruise Port handles the ships. The Staten Island Museum and the National Lighthouse Museum lie over the Kill Van Kull to the south.

What is the history of Bayonne?

Bayonne became a city in 1861. The name Bergen Neck had already marked the peninsula for generations by then, carried by the Dutch congregation whose First Reformed Dutch Church of Bergen Neck still stands on the same ground. Water surrounded the settlement on three sides, with Newark Bay to the west, the Kill Van Kull to the south, and New York Bay to the east.

Churches multiplied along the grid. The bays hemmed in every direction of growth except along the neck itself. Bayonne kept a low skyline.

Blocks of low houses under street trees held the city's shape while denser districts rose across the bays, and that suburban grain still separates Bayonne from the neighbourhoods facing it. Sacred Heart Church and Calvary Presbyterian Church went up among them, part of a run of parishes that gave the peninsula more churches than a place its size usually keeps. Then the cruise terminal arrived.

Cape Liberty Cruise Port turned the New York Bay frontage into a departure point for ocean voyages, and To the Struggle Against World Terrorism was raised on the same waterfront. The ships gave Bayonne a place on ocean itineraries that Hudson County had not held before.

Where is Bayonne?

Bergen Neck is a narrow peninsula. Bayonne fills nearly all of it, running from the Kill Van Kull at the southern tip up the neck toward the rest of Hudson County, with water on both flanks the whole way. Newark Bay lies to the west and New York Bay to the east, so the city looks at harbour traffic from either side of its grid.

Staten Island sits opposite the strait. The whole of it belongs to the Gateway Region of New Jersey, within Hudson County.

What is the climate of Bayonne?

Water works on Bayonne from three sides. New York Bay and Newark Bay hold their temperature longer than the land does, which softens the sharpest edges of a temperate year on the peninsula and keeps sea air moving over the grid. Little of Bergen Neck stands far from open water.

Seasons still turn fully. Bayonne sits well inside the temperate band, so summer and winter both arrive in earnest, with the bays taking the edge off each extreme.

How do you get to Bayonne?

Cape Liberty Cruise Port is the terminal that matters. Ocean ships tie up there on the New York Bay side, and passengers arriving for a sailing reach Bayonne overland from New York City rather than by any crossing of their own. Roads run the length of Bergen Neck.

The peninsula narrows to its southern tip at the Kill Van Kull, where the crossing to Staten Island carries traffic on toward the rest of the harbour, while Newark Bay closes the western flank. Hudson County lies straight up the neck.