Jersey Street: Part One Northwest side between Richmond Terrace and Pauw Street

When I was a kid, Jersey Street had a reputation as a dangerous place. Much of that was overblown and attributable to racism. It wasn't the safest place on the Island, though. Once it had been a heavily trafficked commercial and residential strip, but my childhood, the projects and changing demographics had dimmed Jersey Street considerably.

Once upon a time it was a street lined by shops with apartments over head and even a synagogue. Just off it were detached houses and a church. By the early eighties, a large stretch of the old buildings were demolished and replaced with attached townhouses. Today, Jersey Street is a little better than it was in the eighties and recently a few new businesses have opened. No matter what happens, Jersey Street will never be the mighty commercial strip it once was. As usual, the removal of mixed-use building and their replacement with purely residential housing projects utterly changed the fundamentals of the area. A ton more people were packed into the area, but a great number of stores were eliminated, limiting the choices residents would have.