Bloomfield was incorporated as a town on February 26, 1900. In 1904, The city of Newark failed in its attempts to reannex Bloomfield as part of the "Greater Newark" movement. In 1981, the town was one of seven Essex County municipalities to pass a referendum to become a township, joining four municipalities that had already made the change, of what would ultimately be more than a dozen Essex County municipalities to reclassify themselves as townships in order to take advantage of federal revenue sharing policies that allocated townships a greater share of government aid to municipalities on a per capita basis.