The Jersey City Armory is an armory for the U.S. Army National Guard at 678 Montgomery Street in the McGinley Square neighborhood in Jersey City, New Jersey.
- Venue
- Jersey City Armory
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- New Jersey, US
The Jersey City Armory is an armory for the U.S. Army National Guard at 678 Montgomery Street in the McGinley Square neighborhood in Jersey City, New Jersey. Completed in 1937, the armory was designed by Chief Architect General Hugh A. Kelly of the Jersey City firm of Kelly and Gruzen in the Beaux-Arts style. In addition to being a military training and mustering facility of the New Jersey National Guard (New Jersey National Guard 2/113 Infantry 250 Jersey City), the WPA era armory has long been used as a sports arena, particularly for boxing, basketball, and track and field events, and more recently, mixed martial arts. Under the auspices of the New Jersey Department of Military and Veterans Affairs, the armory is leased to the city for community and political events and extracurricular sports programs. It has also been used as a film studio. The current armory was built to replace the previous Fourth Regiment Armory located on McGinley Square at Bergen Avenue, Mercer Street, and Tuers Avenue, the current site of Hudson Catholic Regional High School. It had been built in 1895 and was designed in the Richardson Romanesque style, which was popular at the time for commercial, industrial and educational institutions. The Fourth Regiment Armory quickly became the premier indoor sports and social venue for the city. Several early semi-professional basketball teams called the armory home such as the Jersey City Saints (1915-1916) and the Jersey City Skeeters (1917-1919, 1926). The 1919 Skeeters featured future Hall of Famers John Beckman and Nat Holman. In the early hours of June 17, 1927, a large three-alarm fire swept through the entire facility and destroyed the structure. In 1941, the large archway and turrets that served as a portion of the entrance façade from the previous armory were erected at Pershing Field Park in the Jersey City Heights. Opening in 1937, the armory was constructed between 1934 and 1936 as a Works Progress Administration project during the Great