New condos on Duncan Avenue in Jersey City carry name of legendary woman politician from the Boss Hague Era: Mary T. Norton

Published: Tuesday, November 15, 2011, 3:00 AM
By Terrence T. McDonald/The Jersey Journal


Paul R. DeBellis Sr., principal of the Franklin Development Group, which built the condominiums, speaks at the ribbon-cutting ceremony.

Jersey City officials yesterday heaped praise on a former U.S. congresswoman whose name now adorns a 24-unit condominium complex on Duncan Avenue.

Mary T. Norton, the first woman from an Eastern state to win a seat in Congress, was a prominent political figure in Jersey City during the era of Mayor Frank Hague.

Also the first woman to chair the Congressional Committee on Education and Labor, Norton, who died in 1959, was a champion of working people, officials said yesterday.

?We don?t remember a day when employers were allowed to pay blacks less than whites, women less than men, and children as young as seven pennies a day,? said Barbara Griffin, the head of nearby St. Dominic Academy.

Griffin added, ?She made a difference.?
The new, five-story complex officially dubbed Mary Norton Manor contains 24 units, all with two bedrooms and some with two bathrooms. No one occupies the building yet, but there are five contracts signed, according to the developer.

The state provided roughly $4.6 million in construction and subsidy loans for the project, which also received county and city funding.