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North Jersey Has Been "the Medicine Chest of the World" for 150 Years -- Not Just Wall Street's Suburb
North Jersey sits close enough to Manhattan that its default read is financial-services overflow -- Newark and Jersey City as the NYC banking industry's backyard. That is real, but it is not the older or the larger story. New Jersey has been called "the Medicine Chest of the World" for roughly 150 years, the birthplace of the country's most concentrated pharmaceutical industry -- Merck founded and headquartered in Rahway since the 19th century, alongside Johnson & Johnson, Bristol-Myers Squibb, and BD, all rooted in the same corridor. A few miles away, a 19-year-old named Leon Hess bought a secondhand oil delivery truck in 1933, opened his first New Jersey terminal in Perth Amboy in 1938, and built a refinery in Port Reading in 1958 that eventually made his company a national oil producer. Pharma and oil are North Jersey's own real industrial identity, built independently of Manhattan's finance industry, in the same corridor of port access and rail infrastructure that made both possible.

Start with the nickname almost nobody outside pharma has heard, because it is older and truer than the finance-suburb read. New Jersey has been called "the Medicine Chest of the World" for roughly a century and a half -- not a marketing phrase invented recently, but a real description of the country's most concentrated pharmaceutical industry, rooted specifically in the north of the state.[1] Johnson & Johnson, Bristol-Myers Squibb, BD, and Merck all built their foundations here, in a corridor most people driving through on the way to New York never register as an industry at all.[1]

Merck's own history is the clearest single thread. Merck & Co. was founded and headquartered in Rahway, New Jersey, and stayed there for generations before moving to Whitehouse Station in 1992 and then Summit, New Jersey in 2015 -- more than a century in North Jersey specifically, never leaving the state even as the exact town changed.[2] The company that eventually became one of the largest pharmaceutical firms in the world built its identity in the same stretch of North Jersey most people associate only with turnpike exits and refinery smoke.

~150 yrsNew Jersey has been called "the Medicine Chest of the World"
1933Leon Hess starts his company with one secondhand oil delivery truck
70,000 bbl/daycapacity of Hess's own Port Reading, NJ refinery

The oil industry's own North Jersey story starts even smaller, and it is not the Newark financial corridor either. Leon Hess founded his company in 1933 at nineteen years old, with a single secondhand oil delivery truck.[3] He opened his first receiving terminal in Perth Amboy in 1938, opened his first New Jersey gas station in 1960, and built a refinery in Port Reading that came online in 1958, eventually processing 70,000 barrels of oil a day before closing in 2013.[3] In 1969, Hess acquired Amerada Petroleum, one of the country's largest crude producers, forming Amerada Hess -- a national oil company built from a North Jersey base one truck at a time.

Why here, specifically -- not an accident of geography Perth Amboy, Port Reading, and the rest of North Jersey's industrial waterfront sit directly on New York Harbor, the same deepwater port access and rail infrastructure that let both pharmaceutical manufacturing and oil refining and distribution scale from a single site to a national industry. It is the same underlying resource -- proximity to the country's largest port -- doing two completely different jobs for two completely different industries, neither of which is Manhattan's own financial-services industry, in the same stretch of New Jersey most outsiders read only as the drive between the airport and the city.

None of this erases the real financial-services overflow into Newark and Jersey City -- it just means that is not the whole story, or even the oldest part of it. The Manhattan-adjacent read of North Jersey is accurate as far as it goes: real banking and financial-sector employment has genuinely moved across the Hudson into Newark and Jersey City. But it arrived after pharma and oil had already been North Jersey's own real industrial identity for the better part of a century, built on the region's own resource -- the harbor -- rather than borrowed from the city across the river.

A companion piece traces the other half of the state. South Jersey had its own real identity for a century before Atlantic City ever had a casino -- cranberry bogs, the world's first boardwalk, and a working rodeo, none of it Wall Street and none of it gambling either. North and South Jersey run on completely different real economies, sharing a state line and very little else.

The takeaway North Jersey's default read is financial-services overflow from Manhattan -- Newark and Jersey City as Wall Street's backyard. That is real, but not the older or larger story. New Jersey has been called "the Medicine Chest of the World" for roughly 150 years, the birthplace of the country's most concentrated pharmaceutical industry: Merck founded and headquartered in Rahway for generations (later Whitehouse Station, then Summit, never leaving the state), alongside Johnson & Johnson, Bristol-Myers Squibb, and BD. Independently, Leon Hess founded his oil company in 1933 at nineteen with a single secondhand delivery truck, opened his first New Jersey terminal in Perth Amboy in 1938, and built a Port Reading refinery in 1958 that processed 70,000 barrels a day before closing in 2013 -- growing into Amerada Hess, a national oil producer, after a 1969 acquisition. Both industries scaled from the same underlying resource: North Jersey's direct access to New York Harbor's deepwater port and rail infrastructure, doing two completely different jobs for two completely different industries, neither of them Manhattan finance. The financial-services overflow into Newark and Jersey City is real, but it arrived after pharma and oil had already been North Jersey's own industrial identity for most of a century.
Sources
  1. New Jersey Business Magazine, The Medicine Chest of the World at 250
  2. Wikipedia / Merck & Co. corporate history, Merck & Co.
  3. Wikipedia / Port Reading Refinery, Port Reading Refinery -- Hess Oil and Chemical History