Walk the length of Bergenline Avenue on a Saturday morning and you will hear Spanish long before you hear English. The smell of café cubano drifts out of bakery doorways, salsa leaks from a tailor’s radio, and pastry cases glow with guava and cream cheese. This is the heart of the Cubans in West New York, New Jersey, a square mile of the Hudson Palisades that an earlier generation christened Havana on the Hudson.
The Place
West New York is a town of barely one square mile perched on the Palisades cliffs in Hudson County, directly across the river from Midtown Manhattan. It was incorporated by an act of the New Jersey Legislature on 8 July 1898, carved out of older Hudson County townships.
For its size it is astonishingly crowded. The 2020 census counted 52,912 residents packed into less than a square mile, making West New York one of the most densely populated municipalities in the entire United States.
It is also one of the most Hispanic places in America. In 2020, roughly three quarters of the town, 75.81 per cent, identified as Hispanic or Latino, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The Cuban story is the spine that the rest of that history hangs upon. New Jersey holds many such single-community enclaves, from the Ukrainians in Whippany, New Jersey to the Estonians in Lakewood, New Jersey, but few are as concentrated as this one.
How It Became Cuban
West New York did not start out Spanish-speaking. It started out Swiss, German and stitched with thread.
The thread that came first
At the turn of the twentieth century, Swiss and German-speaking immigrants brought the embroidery trade to North Hudson. The machinery they used was enormous, single units weighing five to eight tons, and it needed the solid bedrock of the Palisades to anchor it so the needles would not vibrate. The river and the New York garment district sat conveniently to the east.
By 1948, the 428 embroidery manufacturers in North Hudson produced ninety per cent of all the embroidery made in America. The 183 firms in West New York alone made up the single largest share. North Hudson called itself the Embroidery Capital of the United States, and the boast was true.
That industry mattered to the Cuban story for a plain reason. It meant work. When the exiles arrived, there were factory floors, piecework and stable wages waiting in a town small enough to walk across.
The first Cubans
A modest Cuban presence existed in North Hudson before the revolution. Around two thousand Cubans were living in neighbouring Union City before 1959, many of them from Fomento and the semi-rural province of Villa Clara. They had come for the same embroidery jobs that drew everyone else.
When Fidel Castro took power in 1959, that trickle became a flood. By 1962, when commercial flights between the two countries were suspended, some 200,000 Cubans had already left the island, as documented in the history of Havana on the Hudson. The early waves were often professionals and middle-class families, people who arrived with skills and a determination to rebuild.
A boy from Bejucal
No single life maps the arc better than that of Albio Sires. He was born in Bejucal, Cuba, in 1951, and his family emigrated to the United States in 1962 to escape Castro’s government. They settled in West New York.
Sires grew up to be a basketball star at the local Memorial High School, earned a scholarship to Saint Peter’s College, taught school, and went into business. In 1995 he was elected mayor of West New York, the town that had taken his family in. He went on to spend sixteen years in the United States House of Representatives, then returned to the mayor’s office in 2023.
His story was not unique so much as representative. Thousands of families arrived in those decades, found cheap rent on the Palisades, bought into the embroidery economy, and quietly rebuilt.
Havana on the Hudson
By the late 1960s the transformation was visible on the street. Cuban entrepreneurs opened storefront after storefront along Bergenline Avenue, the town’s long commercial spine that runs ninety blocks through North Hudson. Bodegas, bakeries, pharmacies, record shops, restaurants: more than three hundred businesses turned the avenue into a Spanish-language main street.
Locals nicknamed it the Miracle Mile, and the wider district earned its enduring name, Havana on the Hudson. For exiles who could not go home, it was the next best thing, a place where the language, the food and the music of the island were all within walking distance. The same pattern unfolded a few blocks south, where the Cubans in Union City, New Jersey built a near-identical Spanish-language main street.
By 2006, Hudson County held the nucleus of New Jersey’s Cuban community, a population numbering around 100,000 people, with West New York and Union City at its centre.
The Landmarks
Bergenline Avenue. The avenue is the landmark, ninety blocks of commerce running south from West New York through Union City and beyond. For decades it has carried the route of the Cuban Day Parade and remains the cultural and commercial heart of the community. Its nickname, the Miracle Mile, was earned in shop rents and storefront dreams.
Dos Amigos, 5300 Bergenline Avenue. A no-frills Cuban kitchen that has fed the neighbourhood for over two decades, known across Hudson County for its steak sandwiches and its batidos. The milkshakes come in flavours like trigo, made from wheat, and mamey, a Cuban fruit most American menus have never heard of.
El Fenix Bakery II, 6122 Bergenline Avenue. One of the avenue’s panaderias, turning out the guava pastries, croquetas and Cuban breads that anchor a North Hudson morning. Bakeries like this are where the older generation still gathers over café con leche.
Memorial High School, 5501 Park Avenue. Opened in 1926, the town’s high school has educated generations of Cuban-American children, among them a future mayor and congressman. By the 2023 to 2024 school year it enrolled around 2,300 students, most of them Hispanic.
Celia Cruz Park, Union City. Just south of West New York, this park was dedicated in 2004 to the late Queen of Salsa, Celia Cruz, in a ceremony attended by her husband Pedro Knight. Its Walk of Fame sets marble stars into the ground for Latin musicians including Tito Puente, Johnny Pacheco and Beny Moré.
Boulevard East. The cliff-top boulevard runs along the edge of the Palisades with parks strung between the apartment blocks, offering one of the great unobstructed views of the Manhattan skyline. For exiles who arrived by way of New York, it was the first place many of them stood and looked back east toward the water.
The Cuban Day Parade of New Jersey. Since the turn of the millennium, the parade has marched south along Bergenline Avenue each year, growing into the centrepiece of festivities at Schuetzen Park and Celia Cruz Park. It is the day the whole district remembers the island out loud.
Where They Came From
The Cubans of West New York did not arrive from one place evenly. The earliest, pre-revolution arrivals often came from the centre of the island, from Fomento and the province of Villa Clara, drawn by relatives already working the embroidery machines.
After 1959 the origins broadened. The exile waves of the 1960s pulled from Havana and the professional classes, families who had the means and the urgency to leave first. Later arrivals came through Varadero and other channels as the door opened and closed over the following decade.
What united them was less a single home town than a single rupture. They were people who had lost a country and were determined to assemble a working substitute on a square mile of cliff. The embroidery jobs, the cheap walk-up flats and the existing Cuban families already on Bergenline Avenue made West New York the logical place to land. The larger and more famous Cuban exile capital lay south in Florida, in places like the Cubans in Hialeah, Florida and the affluent suburb of the Cubans in Pinecrest, Florida, but the Hudson colony was the island’s northern outpost.
Over time, Cubans were joined on the avenue by Dominicans, and later by Ecuadorians, Salvadorans, Mexicans and Colombians. The Spanish stayed; the accents multiplied.
West New York Today
The embroidery is gone. The industry that built the town faded between the 1980s and the 1990s as production moved overseas, and today almost nothing of it remains in North Hudson but historical markers and memories.
The Cuban community has changed shape too. Many of the original exile families have prospered and moved on, into the suburbs, into Florida, into the comfortable middle class their parents worked toward. Some followed the old exile road all the way to the end of the keys, to communities like the Cubans in Key West, Florida, the nearest American soil to the island itself. The Cuban share of the avenue is smaller than it was, and Dominican and Central American neighbours now run many of the storefronts that were once unambiguously Cuban.
Yet the imprint is permanent. Bergenline Avenue is still Spanish-speaking from end to end. The bakeries still sell pastelitos, the parade still marches every year, and the town’s mayor is still the boy from Bejucal who arrived in 1962. West New York remains one of the densest, most fully Latino places in America, and Cuban hands shaped the mould the rest of that community was poured into.
Down on the waterfront, where ferry slips and luxury towers now line the old Bulls Ferry shore beneath the Palisades, the river still runs east toward Manhattan. The exiles who first looked across it could not have pictured the skyline tonight. The avenue at their backs, though, they would recognise in a heartbeat.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is West New York, New Jersey called Havana on the Hudson?
The nickname dates to the 1960s, when large numbers of Cuban exiles settled in West New York and neighbouring Union City after the Cuban Revolution. They opened hundreds of Spanish-language businesses along Bergenline Avenue, and the district became so densely Cuban that locals dubbed North Hudson Havana on the Hudson.
How many Cubans live in West New York, New Jersey?
West New York is about three quarters Hispanic, with 75.81 per cent of its 52,912 residents identifying as Hispanic or Latino in 2020. By 2006 Hudson County as a whole held roughly 100,000 Cubans, the nucleus of New Jersey’s Cuban community, centred on West New York and Union City. Many other Latino groups now live there alongside the Cubans.
What drew Cuban exiles to West New York specifically?
Two things: jobs and a foothold. North Hudson was the embroidery capital of the United States, offering steady factory work in a town small enough to walk across. A modest Cuban community already existed in the area before 1959, so later exiles arrived to find relatives, the Spanish language and familiar businesses already in place.
What is Bergenline Avenue?
Bergenline Avenue is the long commercial spine of North Hudson, running about ninety blocks through West New York and Union City. Cuban entrepreneurs filled it with more than three hundred shops, restaurants and bakeries, earning it the nickname the Miracle Mile. It also serves as the route of the annual Cuban Day Parade of New Jersey.
Who is Albio Sires?
Albio Sires was born in Bejucal, Cuba, in 1951 and emigrated to West New York in 1962 to escape Castro’s government. He became a star athlete at Memorial High School, served as mayor of West New York from 1995, spent sixteen years in the U.S. House of Representatives, and returned to the mayor’s office in 2023. His life mirrors the wider Cuban journey through the town.
Is West New York still a Cuban community today?
It remains deeply Latino and visibly shaped by its Cuban roots, though the makeup has shifted. Many original exile families have moved away, and Dominican, Ecuadorian, Salvadoran and Mexican neighbours now share Bergenline Avenue. The bakeries, the parade and the Spanish-language street life endure, and the town’s mayor is still a 1962 Cuban arrival.
If your family’s story passed through West New York, or any of the places Cubans have made home in America, Atlas of Home can trace that journey. From a town in Villa Clara or a street in Havana, to a walk-up flat above Bergenline Avenue, to wherever you are now.