The Beacon, which occupies the Jersey City Medical Center's rehabilitated original complex, creates the northeastern corner of the Bergen-Lafayette section and is just east of McGinley Square.

During the Great Depression, new buildings were added as a Works Progress Administration project secured by Mayor Frank Hague,[6] The Jersey City Medical Center included such architectural and designer trappings as marble walls, terrazzo floors, etched glass, decorative moldings and glittering chandeliers, and had one of the most famous maternity wards in the country – the Margaret Hague Maternity Hospital.

In 1994, the State of New Jersey designated it as a regional trauma center, and in the late 1990s it was approved as a core teaching affiliate of Mount Sinai School of Medicine.

Sections of the interior of Murdoch Hall were used because they resembled the art deco backdrop of Manhattan's Rockefeller Center, where the game show Twenty-One was filmed.

[14] Richard Price 1992 novel, Clockers, makes a thinly veiled reference to the abandoned Margaret Hague Maternity Hospital on Clifton Place.