"Kiesel Place"

There are a few streets in North Bergen named for former residents. One street bears the name of a mayor, Nolan Avenue. Other streets are named after former industries that once called North Bergen Home, Givernaud Terrace and Aschoff Place. There are streets that pay homage to the early settlers of North Bergen, Newkirk, Smith and Tonelle Avenues. However, as I walked my dog up 73rd Street from Cottage Avenue, I crossed an unsuspecting throughway. I walked down the street and came to a dead end, headed back and discovered that I was on Kiesel Place. 

1910 Sanborn Insurance Map

Couresty of Princeton University Library

The street was named for Johann Kiesel. Born in Germany, 1874, and arrived to North Bergen in 1890. He married Anna Hoffman, 1904, and together they had several children; John (1905), Frederick (1909), Barbara (1910), Augusta (1912), Jacob (1914), Anna (1915) & Bernard (1920). However, that is not what gets you a street named after you, although it should have got his wife a street named after her. What will is what Kiesel did in North Bergen, which in some case can still be seen today. 

1920 Federal Census

Courtesy of FamilySearch

According to the Federal Census records, Kiesel worked in several industries in North Bergen. He worked as a butcher, a tallow man (soap maker) at B.T. Babbit Soap Factory, and a florist. However, what Kiesel should be best known for is his career as a home builder. The Kiesel family lived on and what would become Cottage Avenue. There they owned the property between Cottage & Durham Avenues and 73rd & 76th Streets. At one time the Kiesel's operated a farm complete with green houses which would have been located presently on the backside of North Bergen High School. Records even indicate that Kiesel himself was once in a run away carriage accident after delivering flowers outside of Town Hall.

Homes on 73rd Street circa 1931

Courtesy of Tom Krugliński‎

Shown above is 73rd Street slightly up the hill form Kiesel Place. Kiesel was known to be the primary builder of these homes, most of which are still standing, as well as homes that once lined Cottage Avenue. Kiesel and his sons would build these homes and sell them to the first people to live on 73rd Street when the roadway was created. Kiesel purchased the lots during the early 1900s on average of about $1100 per lot. Kiesel would build the home and then sell them on average for around $7200 each. The builder would establish homes throughout the town up until his death.

Cottage Avenue Homes

Courtesy of Google Maps

Kiesel died while on vacation in 1933 at the families vacation home in Sullivan County, New York. Today Kiesel's work in town is long forgotten with our ever changing residential population and housing landscape. The legacy of Kiesel is honored by the two streets that bear his name, Kiesel Place and Terrace. However there are two historical legend surrounding Kiesel and the Kiesel streets, the wooded area that separates the two streets. Lore has it that as the area developed Kiesel left the area untouched as it reminded him of a forest near his childhood home in Germany. The latter may be romanticized as the the second legend is that the wooded area belonged to another land own who refused to sell the property to Kiesel. Either way the story of Johann Kiesel is great piece of forgotten North Bergen History.