Jersey City Times: ‘Shrines and Grottos’ Celebrate Jersey City’s Devotion to Basketball

https://jcitytimes.com/shrines-and-grottos-celebrate-jersey-citys-devotion-to-basketball/

This is the 12th and final in a weekly series of essays on Jersey City’s illustrious sports history. It complements the Museum of Jersey City History’s current exhibit Legendary Arenas… and the Legends Who Performed There at the Apple Tree House (298 Academy Street). The exhibit is open to the public on Wednesdays and Saturdays from 1:00 to 5:00 pm. until October 15.

By Peter Begans September 26, 2025

Dickinson’s gymnasium has hosted county championships, collegiate all-star games, and innumerable regular season matches in its 92-year history. The recently-completed facility exhibits a hallowed quality in this 1933 photo.

The Armory is Jersey City’s basketball cathedral, but there are many other shrines and grottoes around town where the game has been practiced religiously. These bandbox halls and ancient gymnasiums, these concrete courtyards and asphalt playgrounds, have produced some of the nation’s most skilled players.

From the earliest days of basketball, Jersey City “fives” sought indoor spaces to hang two baskets and play a game. In 1899, the King’s Sons Gymnasium, at Pacific and Whiton, offered a four-month membership and a chance to be on a competitive team with captain and star athlete Arthur McCaig. Manager J. Harry Leonard arranged games with other New Jersey and New York teams, including the struggling team from Jersey City High School that the Lafayette King’s Sons would defeat 27–4 on December 15, 1900.

Other sites were emerging. Donohue Hall at Montgomery and West Side hosted games among the Semper Idem, the West Side Athletic Club, the Trojan Athletic Club, and, of course, the Lafayette King’s Sons. The Warren Athletic Club opened its Hawke’s Hall headquarters at Erie and 13th, where the steadily improving Jersey City High School boys defeated the Orient Athletic Association on December 4, 1904.

At Liederkranz Hall in Hudson City, the N.J. Athletic Club installed dropped lights and seating for several hundred spectators to accommodate Wednesday night basketball games. At Summit and St. Paul’s avenues, the Lauter Piano Company Players used the company warehouse to play teams like the Manhattan Five, made up of Fordham and Manhattan College players. “The remarkable skill of the home team stirred up the liveliest enthusiasm, and old followers of the sport pronounced it superior to any ever offered in this city in basketball,” wrote the Evening Journal on November 18, 1907.

Across the Hudson River, in 1907, the first Black basketball league in the United States was forming. The Olympian Athletic League has become legendary as the birthplace of the “Black Fives.” But few people are aware that the metropolitan league champions in 1909 were not the Smart Set Athletic Club of Brooklyn or the St. Christopher Club of Manhattan, but the team from the Jersey City YMCA. Its star player was Hudson “Huddy” Oliver who graduated from Jersey City High School in January 1907, during an undefeated basketball season. He went on to captain Jersey City to the championship of the six-team Olympian League two years later. “Mr. Hudson Oliver has amazed the public by his wonderful playing and is looked upon as the best player of the six Colored teams,” opined the New York Age in 1909. Oliver would later win four national Colored World Championships with the Smart Set, the Washington 12 Streeters, and Howard University.

Legendary Gymnasiums

For decades, the St. Anthony’s Friars held daily practice at White Eagle Hall on lower Newark Avenue. It was a quirky place to play basketball. The court featured a full-length mirror dating back to its days as a Polish social club. Ball handlers had to remember not to pass to their own reflection. Despite the severe space limitations, Coach Bob Hurley, Sr. would lead St. Anthony’s boys to perhaps the greatest record in scholastic basketball history, earning 28- state titles and producing point guards (Bobby Hurley, Terry Dehere, Danny Hurley, Mandy Johnson, Kenny Wilson, to name but a few) like Chevy produces Corvettes. St. Anthony’s girls also contributed two players, Alice Schmidt and Cathy Myers, to Montclair State’s 1978 Women’s Final Four team, which included Patty Quilty of St. Dominic Academy and Pat Colasurdo of Holy Family Academy.

The former Polish social club on Newark Avenue became the proving ground for St. Anthony’s run to history. Revered coach Bob Hurley, Sr., led the boys team to 28 state basketball titles in his career.   

Collins Memorial Gymnasium was another local legendary facility. It was the first building finished when St. Peter’s College emigrated from Downtown Jersey City to the Westside in the 1930s. The Peacocks played most of their home games at Collins gym into the 1950s and continued to practice there until its demolition. High school teams also played there. It was the site of the annual Horseshoe Tournament featuring St. Mary’s, St. Michael’s, St. Anthony’s, and Ferris, and it hosted the Metropolitan Jesuit Tournament as well.

Collins Memorial Gymnasium was the first building finished on St. Peter’s Westside campus in the 1930s. (Courtesy of St. Peter’s College Archives) 

Collins Gym played host to Peacock opponents like St. John’s and Seton Hall before intense fan interest forced the games to the much larger Jersey City Armory.  (Courtesy of St. Peter’s College Archives)

Dickinson’s gym opened in 1933 and was considered the finest gymnasium in the county at the time. It has hosted innumerable county championship games, collegiate all-star games, as well as hundreds of regular season high school games in its 92-year history. St. Peter’s Prep’s Memorial Gym, opened in 1948, has also hosted many state and county playoff games over the years. “The Barn,” as it is sometimes called, was home to the hugely successful Prep teams of the 1950s and 1960s, under coaches Roy Leenig and Jerry Halligan. The Hudson Catholic gymnasium, now approaching 60 years of age and built on the former site of the 4th Regiment Armory, is perhaps most famous for showcasing the legendary duo of Jimmy Spanarkel and Mike O’Koren in the 1970s, under coach Rocky Pope.

Stretching down Bergen Avenue, a series of excellent facilities aimed to keep young and single people on the straight and narrow. Besides the People’s Palace, there was the YMCA, a half-million-dollar facility built in the mid-1920s; the YWCA, a similar facility for women; and the Jewish Community Center. For decades these facilities sponsored teams that competed against similar organizations throughout the state and frequently brought home state championships. “It was very ecumenical,” remembered Dickinson’s Sandy Ader, Class of ’55. “I played for Grace Lutheran Church. I played for Mount Carmel CYO. I played for the Jewish Community Center of Jersey City. We just looked for games to play in and teams to be on. Many times, we did it with alias names…” (from Hoops Hotbed on the Hudson, by Richard Kaner)

Playing the Jersey City Way

Jersey City kids loved basketball, and they found plenty of places to play. Danny Waddleton, who was a standout at Dickinson, Class of ’60, remembered. “Growing up in the projects, we had a Project League, 10 in the morning on Saturday: Booker T, Lafayette, Marion, Hudson, Montgomery, Holland. But from the Project League, I’d run down to No. 5 school, [where] we had a CYO grammar school team. From there, I’d run up to the CYO to play in the Biddy league. Every night I was in the gym. If it wasn’t school 37, I’d run up the viaduct to No. 6. We were playing basketball all the time.” (from Hoops Hotbed on the Hudson)

Jersey City-born Huddie Oliver (second row, left) was a pioneer among early African American basketball players. He would win four Colored World Championships with the Smart Set, the Washington 12 Streeters, and Howard University. 

In summer, players turned to outdoor courts. Over the years, there were so many favorites: No. 27 in the Heights, No. 23 in Marion, the park near No. 22 in Lafayette, and, of course, Audubon Park on the Boulevard. Every neighborhood seemed to have a choice location, and these spots bred a certain type of basketball, said point guard and coach Jimmy Boylan: “[T[hat’s . . . the essence of Hudson County basketball: to play the right way, play as a group, and make the right play, instead of thinking about trying to score, your own glory, and your own point scoring. A lot of that comes from the school yards, where if you lost the game, you had to sit out.” (From Hoops Hotbed on the Hudson)

In the late 1970s, the Jersey City Department of Recreation created a high-level college summer basketball league at Pershing Field on the floor of the old ice-skating rink. The participants included Spanarkel, O’Koren, Boylan, and other big names like Kelly Tripucka of Notre Dame, Phil Ford of North Carolina, and Butch Lee and Bernard Toone of Marquette.

One of the great stories of this era occurred at St. Joe’s Courtyard in late summer, 1976. After a final night of outdoor basketball, Jimmy Boylan, a junior at Marquette, said to Mike O’Koren, a freshman at North Carolina, “See you in the NCAA Finals.” He really meant it, and, of course, it came true.

Dave D’Alessandro of the Star-Ledger wrote: “…in New Jersey’s very own corner of the basketball universe, the 1977 NCAA title game was about two guys from the schoolyard on Pavonia Ave., meeting under the spotlight at the Omni in Atlanta on March 28, 1977. Boylan’s Marquette defeated O’Koren’s UNC, 67–59. ‘We loved the fact that we were both from Jersey City, [said Boylan], and in a way we helped put the city on the basketball map.’” (SL, 3/25/2011)

From Huddie Oliver in the first decade of the 20th Century to coach Danny Hurley of the University of Connecticut today, Jersey City has created a style that continues to shape American basketball. The speed, intelligence, and competition bred at the city’s asphalt courtyards and bandbox gyms has molded the city’s players, teaching them to “make the right play” and “play the right way.”

Carl Johnson (second from the left) was all-state at Dickinson and later earned MVP honors in the American Basketball League. Typical of the era, Johnson, along with his three brothers and his father the coach (pictured here), organized their own barnstorming team for spare cash and notoriety.  (Courtesy of Maureen Reddington)

And generation after generation has passed this knowledge down, Reflecting on his career, of 12 NCAA Division III Tournaments, two Final Four appearances and five NJ Athletic Conference championships, the 1986 Division III National Coach of the Year Charlie Brown of Jersey City State/NJCU put it this way: “The whole idea of me teaching them [was] so they could go out and teach others. That’s what the legacy is, not just me teaching them, but to have them teach, as well.”

About Peter Begans

Peter Begans is the curator of MJCH’s Legendary Arenas… and the Legends Who Performed There. He was born and raised in Jersey City and has had a long career as a teacher, journalist, speechwriter and public affairs representative.