National Park Service Resorts and Recreation: An Historic Theme Study of the New Jersey Heritage Trail Route The Atlantic Shore: Middlesex, Monmouth, Ocean, Burlington, Atlantic, and Cape May Counties

Camps and Clubs

Early twentieth-century urban development changed the social construction of shore resorts as well as the physical landscape. The trip from city to resort became an easy "commute" rather than an arduous journey; newly designed resorts advertised recreational features and the benefits of residential communities within easy reach of the city. Architects and designers from New York and Philadelphia who followed wealthy clients to the resorts brought the latest ideas about urban planning and the kinds of facilities that should be provided for new communities. Inspired by the City Beautiful movement and memories of the 1893 Chicago Centennial Exhibition, towns such as Spring Lake, Island Heights, and Beach Haven established yacht clubs, tennis clubs, and other recreational facilities. The wealthy summer residents who commissioned such buildings had their own expectations about social life on the shore. Most came from New York and Philadelphia themselves, where they belonged to the appropriate urban social organizations. Over the years, the membership of resort clubs has become less exclusive, reflecting the varied population of the shore communities. In many cases, the remaining club buildings recall lifestyles of wealth and prestige in towns that have since become middle and working class.

Sherborne Farm: "White House of New Jersey"

The shore's natural resources and plentiful wildlife attracted some of the first visitors to Tucker's Island and Cape May. By the middle of the nineteenth century, the hunting and fishing industries were promoted in books by Charles Hallock, including The Sportsman's Gazetteer and General Guide (1883) among others. Hallock gave sportsmen railroad directions from New York and Philadelphia. Those traveling to Beach Haven were advised to take the New Jersey and Southern Railroad by way of the Sandy Hook and Long Branch, and connect at Whitings for the train to Tuckerton. Once on the island, they would enjoy excellent yachting, fine sea bathing, plentiful weakfish, and a variety of wading birds. [1] During the middle decades of the nineteenth century, three hotels on Long Beach Island catered to the needs and desires of urban sportsmen—Harvey Cedars Hotel, Bond's Long Beach House, and the Mansion of Health. [2] Such boarding hotels offered rustic accommodations to men who desired a frontier-like experience. Money was a requirement for such wilderness excursions—the proper clothing, gun, dog, transportation, and lodging were essential elements of the urban sportsman's vacation.

By the early 1890s, a direct train connection ended Long Beach Island's isolation and developers began constructing large, elegant "cottages," particularly in the Beach Haven area. Advances in shotgun technology since the Civil War increased the popularity of recreational sport gunning. Gunners chose to stay in the newly organized gun clubs that provided them with necessary facilities and bayside access, rather than in old-fashioned hotels. The club form of organization was also more suitable for communities that had begun to establish permanent summer residences.

When architect Thomas Sherborne, Jr., designed his Victorian house in the 1870s, he could not have known that "Sherborne Farm" would become a famous Long Beach Island landmark (Fig. 90). The evolution of the property into a sportsmen's retreat should be understood in the context of newly founded sporting hotels and gun clubs throughout the region. [3] During the 1910s and 1920s, Charles W. Beck hosted friends who came to the island on hunting expeditions; three rooms on the third floor of the farm were designated for guests, and other rooms could be mustered as needed. These regular visits earned the home the nickname of "Liberty Hall" (after the adjacent street) and "White House of New Jersey." Numerous photographs have survived of shooting parties with their kill and of men playing musical instruments at the farm. Beck was an officer of the Beach Haven Gun Club, founded shortly after the turn of the century by Philadelphian John Dickerson.

Figure 90. Sherburne Farm, Long Beach Island. HABS No. NJ-1106-1.

The history of the farm and its social circle illustrates Beach Haven's dependency on Philadelphia during these early decades of the twentieth century. Shooting, socializing, and music characterized the male recreational experience of Sherborne Farm, an extension of professional life that rarely included women. The men relished the contrast between their activities and the "predominantly feminine 'rocking chair fleets' on the hotel and cottage porches." [4] That the 1870s farmhouse was built by an architect emphasizes the irony of Philadelphia's elite seeking expensive vacations in artificially primitive settings. The local, year-round residents lived in smaller, impermanent homes which have not survived. Although the club expanded to include yachting in 1907, it suffered a decline in patronage when the Baldwin Hotel opened winterized rooms for gunners.

Little Egg Harbor Yacht Club

The July 1912 Beach Haven Times reported that the founders of Little Egg Harbor Yacht Club (Fig. 91) were primarily "prominent Philadelphia business and professional men who are interested in Beach Haven and have their summer homes here." [5] Instantly popular, the new club attracted forty-five members in two weeks, and shortly established a ladies' auxiliary. During the course of meetings in the Hotel Baldwin—one of Beach Haven's grand hotels—the founders formed a building committee to design their own facility. [6] The committee hired Camden architects Moffet and Stewart and engaged local builder William Butler to erect the structure on landfill from the dredging of the Liberty Thoroughfare.

Figure 91. Little Egg Yacht Club. HABS No. NJ-1105-1.

In August 1916, members held their first recorded meeting in the clubhouse. [7] Of the ninety-seven senior and twenty-one junior members on the 1920 club roster, a majority were from Philadelphia, West Philadelphia, Chestnut Hill, Germantown, Bryn Mawr, and Overbrook, although local towns were also represented. The obituary of founder Morton Gibbons-Neff, recorded in a September 1964 Beach Haven Times, provides a sense of these men's institutional affiliations. A resident of Narberth, Pennsylvania, Gibbons-Neff had been an independent insurance broker, president of Poor Richards' Club, and director of the Franklin Institute, Union League, and the Merion Cricket Club. Apparently many other Little Egg Harbor Yacht Club members belonged to the Merion Cricket Club, a connection that is still discernible today.

In its early years, the club participated in power-boat, cat-boat, and sneak-box races. Associations with the region's other yacht clubs were formed almost immediately; the first annual cruise to the Island Heights Yacht Club was held August 1, 1914. In 1933, the club decided to form a summer camp, which has since become the principal summer program. The Little Egg Harbor Yacht Club originally operated from June to the first week of September. During the off-season, boats were stored in Ostendorff's Garage, the famous garage that served as the club's early meeting place. [8] Younger members would return to Beach Haven on spring weekends from prep school and college to prepare their boats. The Little Egg Harbor Yacht Club now accommodates activities year-round.

The Wanamaker Camp

The history of the Wanamaker Camp (Fig. 92) at Island Heights offers insight into the summer camp movement at the turn of the century, corporate paternalism, and social concern over the education of urban, working-class young people. The camp was an experiment in communal living that incorporated current theories on health and relied on military models. An innovator in the development of department stores and mass retail sales, John Wanamaker founded the John Wanamaker Commercial Institute (JWCI) in 1896 as a vocational and non-vocational training program for his young employees. [9] The Institute's goals were clearly outlined in its 1915 yearbook, "The purpose of the institute is to enable its students, while earning a livelihood, to obtain, by textbooks, lectures, drills and schools of daily opportunity, such personal development and practical and technical education in the arts and sciences of commerce and trade as will equip them to fill honorable positions in life and increase personal earning power." Each young person spent approximately five to seven hours of work per week in the classroom—supposedly compensating for education missed in the years before child labor laws. Instructors divided the students into three groups: junior boys (age 14-16), senior boys (age 16-18), and girls. In the 1915 commencement exercises for the seniors, one speaker pointed out, "In all the work the teachers aim to correlate the material so as to make it serve purposes in the stores." The theory was that a practical application would both hold the students' attention and support the store's interests. [10]

Figure 92. Wanamaker Hall, Island Heights. HABS No. NJ-1144-1.

Two years after founding the Commercial Institute, Wanamaker purchased bayfront land in Island Heights for a summer camp. Island Heights offered convenient rail transportation to both Philadelphia and New York, the sites of Wanamaker's major stores. The town's Methodist origins gave it a wholesome reputation, especially compared with the "decadence" of popular secular shore resorts. For the first four years of the camp, 1900-04, the employees lived in canvas tents. In 1904, the original barracks were constructed to provide protection during the occasionally wet summers. [11] Now boarded up and covered with asbestos shingles, the headquarter's house, complete with battlements giving it a military aspect, was once the center of the Wanamaker retreat. The camp had two-week sessions for boys, and in 1907, girl employees spent their first two-week vacation at Island Heights. Junior cadets (boys) were required to attend camp if they were employed prior to May 1 of the same year; those employed prior to January 1st received one week's pay; those who had attended two consecutive camps received two weeks' pay; and four consecutive years earned three weeks' pay. [12] The cadets, as institute attendees were known, continued to live in army tents after the barracks' construction, although in 1914, wood platforms were added to increase their comfort. [13]

From its beginnings, the camp followed an essentially military organization, with daily dress parades, military bands, and formation marches (Fig. 93). World War I reinforced this military inclination, and from 1910 to 1920, an officers' training camp was held at the barracks. Early newspaper articles report that the town enjoyed the drills and dress parades. On one unusual Sunday in August 1910, the newspaper claimed that 2,000 attended the cadets' dress parade. [14] The John Wanamaker Commercial Institute bands regularly performed at the Island Heights Yacht Club and at other clubs and local events. [15] Many early photographs show the cadets marching and performing in formation, carrying flags and wood guns. Despite its regimented schedule—the battalions and companies, officers, and cadets—the camp also provided relaxed and informal waterfront activities like swimming and boating.

Figure 93. Wanamaker Commercial Club Girls. Postcard. Allaback

In 1909, Wanamaker founded the Meadowbrook Club, an athletic-oriented club that complemented the more academic orientation of the Institute. Meadowbrook's 1920 yearbook explained, "Here is just the problem of to-day as it exists in the Wanamaker store; the problem of how to keep the intellectual boy and girl from becoming physically flabby and of how to keep the athletic employee from becoming intellectually flabby." [16] This emphasis on physical development also drew impetus from World War I, when the nation's draft revealed that many young men were "deficient physically." [17] Wanamaker's constructed a complete athletic facility on the roof of the Philadelphia store and used an athletic field at the corner of 23rd and Market streets. The club competed regularly against high schools, colleges, and other athletic clubs. [18]

The 1914 daily routine conveys a sense of the camp's military-style schedule. Twenty-nine calls during the day marked the parameters of waking, eating, exercise, clean-up, military drills, playing, and sleeping. The "Record of Daily Happenings" humanizes this rigid description by mentioning the competitions and prizes, visitors' days, special parades, concerts, speeches, and sailing parties. Whereas the boys' camp is more consistently referred to as a "military camp," the girl employees are frequently described as vacationers with chaperons. Some records suggest similarities between the boys' and girls' camps—such as marching in military formations. One former female cadet, employed by the store from 1926-36, recalled "drilling and marching either with wood guns or playing our instruments. Our uniforms were either dark blue with white trimming—or our dress uniform, which we frequently wore at camp, of white with blue. One of our trips yearly at camp was to go over to Seaside Heights to march and play our instruments in the yearly baby parade." She wrote of the athletic endeavors as well as the marching and drilling formations. [19]

"Suburbs of New York and Philadelphia"

When the Philadelphia and Long Branch Railroad met the New York and Long Branch in 1881, the area south of Toms River was open for development. However, significant building did not occur until twentieth-century land speculators and their corporate sponsors planned vacation communities along the river. The original developers promoted their new resorts' proximity to New York and Philadelphia. In the past, women and children were frequently sent to summer homes by the seaside while men remained at jobs in the cities. Land speculators promoted convenient transportation that would allow working fathers to escape from the city for weekend reunions with their families.

Today, the small towns surrounding Toms River are defined by connecting highways. A central traffic artery, Route 9, connects the communities with the southern shore, while the river forms a common northern boundary. According to the Ocean County Observer, "for most people, South Toms River begins where Main Street in Toms River. . . (Route 166), crosses the Toms River and heads toward Route 530." The surrounding towns of Ocean Gate, Pine Beach, and Beachwood are perceived as part of the single region of South Toms River, all dependant on the municipal and commercial services of the nearby county seat.

Pine Beach

The Methodists who set up camp in Island Heights late in the nineteenth century were not concerned with the real estate market. But when Philadelphian Robert Horter visited the area in 1908, he saw the potential value of the land at the railroad crossing known as Island Heights Junction. Within a year, Horter and his financial backer, George Kelly, surveyed the land, mapped the streets, and loaded the prospective customers onto trains. The Pine Beach Improvement Company sold 109 lots the first year. Building continued at a frantic pace until 1912, when demand began to level out significantly. By then, Kelly had already completed the Pine Beach Inn, a seventy-five-room hotel that became part of the Admiral Farragut Academy in 1933 (Fig. 94). During the boom years, LeRoy Hutchinson built the Pine Beach Chapel, a Queen Anne, Shingle-style church. Five years later, Hutchinson completed the Pine Beach Yacht Club, a building he replaced with an expanded two-story version in 1921. [20] The local architect was also responsible for much of the residential development concentrated along Midland and Henley streets within the founder's grid plan. When it was incorporated in 1925, Pine Beach consisted of "about 120 houses (80 percent summer occupied), two stores, Winterling's gas station, Pine Beach Inn, Pine Beach Chapel, [and] Pine Beach Yacht Club." [21]

Figure 94. Admiral Farragut Academy, Pine Beach. HABS No. NJ-1160-1.

The establishment of the Admiral Farragut Academy, the first American naval preparatory school, brought unexpected distinction to Pine Beach. After searching the East Coast from Florida to Maine, school founders decided to remodel the empty Pine Beach Inn into a dormitory and classrooms. Only three acres when it was founded in 1933, the campus had spread over twenty-eight acres and included eight buildings by 1975. The academy is incorporated into a residential neighborhood oriented toward the river. Within walking distance of both chapel and docks, the school marks a decisive break in the regular pattern of houses and pines. It closed in 1994.

Beachwood

In 1915, the New York Tribune published a promotional pamphlet describing Beachwood, the latest resort development south of Toms River. Interested buyers were invited to send for an application to purchase a Beachwood lot. For a mere $19.60 and the price of a six-month subscription to the Tribune, future residents could enjoy "the best there is at Barnegat Bay." [22] A money-making scheme created by Bertram Chapman Mayo, the newspaper's promotions manager, Beachwood began as 2,000 acres laid out in 20' x 100' lots. The advertisement hoped to attract New Yorkers by emphasizing the future town's location at the intersection of the Central and Pennsylvania Railroads. Pictures of forest paths, blueberry bushes, and bathing in the bay were juxtaposed with the assurance that "a continuous stream of automobiles pass through Beachwood on the way to Atlantic City." [23]

The Tribune immediately hired civil engineer Addison D. Nickerson to design and build a clubhouse, pier, bathhouse, lodge, dining hall, and railroad station. "By May 1915, More than ninety new owners and their families were visiting Beachwood, living in tents on their new land or staying at the thirty-seven room lodge." [24] The exclusive settlement of "rustic cabins and bungalows" became a borough in 1917. Five years later, Beachwood was in the process of forming a volunteer fire department, building a chapel, and constructing the Polyhue Yacht Club. Primarily a residential community, Beachwood has maintained a suburban scale despite the proximity of Route 9. The tradition of preserving the pines, established by the Beachwood Property Owners Association in 1919, has also preserved a sense of the atmosphere Mayo so convincingly described. [25]

Ocean Gate

Like Pine Beach and Beachwood, Ocean Gate, the most coastal of the three cities, began as a planned development. Founded in 1909 by Charles Guttentag, president of the Great Eastern Building Corporation, Ocean Gate was advertised in Philadelphia newspapers before construction began. Potential buyers, who were taken to the future settlement by train from Philadelphia, often purchased lots on the trip home. [26] The property, once a farm owned by a Toms River businessman, was laid out in a grid of streets named for popular resorts like Long Branch and Cape May. Residential lots varied in price according to their distance from the Pennsylvania Railroad line that cut diagonally through town; houses south of the tracks started at $500, while those north of the railroad and nearer the water were valued at a minimum of $1,000. Potential customers passed through the 1910 train station on Narragansett Avenue, now used as a municipal building.

By the time it became a borough in 1918, Ocean Gate had an elementary school, a fire company, two hotels, and several stores. After its incorporation, the city improved roads, and constructed a public pier and an 8 foot-wide boardwalk. A Methodist church was built on the corner of Bayview and Asbury avenues. Unlike the primarily residential neighboring communities, Ocean Gate developed a substantial commercial district. Ocean Gate Avenue is hardly bustling today, but the remaining shops, Kiesel's Hotel, and the yacht club suggest a self-sufficient community with a once-prosperous past.

Pinewald

Originally designed by Colonel Will Farrow for retired members of the military, Barnegat Park was soon transformed by the utopian ideas of B.W. Sangor. The New York and Miami developer imagined a vast and luxurious resort town catering to wealthy urban vacationers. Between 1928 and 1929, about 8,000 lots were sold in Pinewald, a "new-type, residential, recreational city-of-the sea-and-pines." [27] The developers immediately began construction of the Pinewald pavilion and pier at the end of Butler Avenue. The Royal Pines Hotel (Fig. 95), a $ 1.175 million investment facing Crystal Lake, was built on the site of an earlier hotel dating back to the days of Barnegat Park. [28]

Figure 95. Royal Pines Hotel, Pinewald. HABS No. NJ-1101-1.

Mystery surrounds the eight-story concrete-and-steel building rising above the scrubby pines. Said to have been constructed by Russian architect W. Oltar-Jevsky in the early 1920s, the Royal Pines could serve as a movie set. Al Capone may have frequented its halls, perhaps even venturing beneath the lake in tunnels especially designed for smuggling "package goods." One newspaper article interviewed an unidentified man who claimed that "in the early 1930s the then Royal Pines Hotel was frequented by society's elite who, for $1.90 a drink, consumed prohibition liquor under the watchful eye of men who had guns strapped under their coats." [29]

After the stock market crash in 1929, the hotel was purchased for $50,000 and converted into a nursing home. Brochures advertising the medical center continued to emphasize its beneficial location. "You are in the pines yet at the sea. Relax on the promenade, if you wish, collecting your coat of tan. Breathe in the salty freshness of the ocean from the deck of a sailboat across the bay. Swim in the cameo-like Crystal Lake on which the Royal Pines fronts." [30] The building currently houses the Bayview Convalescent Center. Though the interior has been modernized, the dilapidated exterior recalls the hotel's grand history. The second floor opens out onto a terrace and bridge crossing the road to an abandoned lakeside pavilion. Stucco cornucopias, fixed atop either side of the bridge walls, recall a more plentiful past.

Twentieth-Century Resort Development

Figure 96. Sun Fun in New Jersey. Library of Congress. ca. 1920s.

Since the "boom years" of the railroad, the Jersey Shore has undergone steady change; during the nineteenth century, many northern resorts grew from the speculative ventures of individual improvement companies based in New York and Philadelphia. The area around Toms River and the Island Beach peninsula was slated for private development, but the village of Toms River and the communities along Barnegat Bay also received resort trade as a result of the railroad. The southern barrier islands became habitable, and even popular, as private companies anticipated the arrival of crowds by rail. In contrast, the religious resorts sprinkled along the shore depended more on the vision of a dedicated association, though these towns also grew after the main railroad lines were established.

With a few exceptions, the goals of the earliest resorts—the establishment of healthful and spiritual retreats amid natural surroundings—have been obscured by the practical requirements of modern commercialization. While people still seek the spiritual peace promised by a seaside vacation, they seldom find the pristine landscape frequently described in contemporary brochures (Fig. 96). In exchange for a host of modern conveniences, from instant food and gasoline to automatic tellers, a price is paid in the physical condition of the environment. Because resorts depend on both services and ambiance to attract tourists, issues affecting population and preservation determine economic livelihood. Such vital questions concerned early shore historians H.C. Woolman and T.H. Rose. At the end of his entry on beach residents, Woolman documents the construction of "summer homes for city families," noting, somewhat wistfully, that the new buildings would gradually replace "the weather-beaten dwellings" of those "humble beachmen" who "gather a livelihood from the natural productions of the neighboring bay." [31] Woolman's nostalgia for the simpler existence complementing nature touched on the paradox of the resort; the very people who visited, seeking to refresh themselves in the quiet of undisturbed wilderness, eventually destroyed that natural peace.

Wildwood

Since the founding of Holly Beach as a health resort amid "wild woods," Wildwood has undergone a social and architectural transformation. During the 1890s, Philadelphia papers advertised large numbers of rental cottages and hotel accommodations. Local guests were entertained at a band-concert pavilion near the beach, joined by a carousel in 1892. Early photographs of the Holly Beach area, now the city of Wildwood, showboats and piers scattered across the sand like driftwood. As late as the 1930s, tourists visiting "the port of call for the Atlantic fishing fleet" could watch boats haul in shipments of cod and mackerel that "are among the largest on the coast." [32] The beaches still entertain large crowds, but contemporary visitors no longer come to Wildwood for its tangled vegetation or fish-laden vessels. Wildwood's distinctive resort personality developed in the 1950s. Encouraged by the completion of the Garden State Parkway, promoters built resort hotels to attract lower- and middle-class "excursionists." Wildwood offered cheap, exciting entertainment for the day, as well as accommodations for extended stays at reasonable prices (Fig. 97). The "new resort provided an appealing compromise between the amusement parks at Atlantic City and Asbury Park, and the classier resorts of Stone Harbor and Cape May.

Figure 97. "Just a Hop, Skip and a Jump to Wildwood." Cape May County Historical & Genealogical Society.

The city's nineteenth- and early twentieth-century heritage is preserved in a number of Victorian civic and residential structures. Yet, when local businessmen approached the Mid-Atlantic Center for the Arts (MAC) in Cape May to begin to promote Wildwood's history, it recommended that the city turn to its commercial architecture—the motels, diners, and movie theaters built during the mid twentieth century. The result was a "Back to the '50s" trolley tour highlighting what Wildwood's promoters call "Doo-wop" styles: "Blast Off!," "Pu-Pu Platter," and "Phony Colonee." Architectural features include "Jetson Fins," "Boomerang Roof lines," "Tomorrowland Ramps," and "Levitating Rooms/Signs." [33] Night is the best time to observe the blocks and blocks of mesmerizing neon lights, spectacular colors, and outrageous designs of the motel architecture exhibiting such features (Fig. 98). Not surprisingly, the architectural boom of the 1950s-60s corresponds to what many regard as the Wildwoods' "heyday"—the club years when performers such as Lionel Hampton, Chubby Checker, Johnny Mathis, Liberace, and Connie Francis entertained the crowds.

Figure 98. Boardwalk by Night, Wildwood-by-the-Sea. Postcard. Allaback

The study of individual hotels begins to demonstrate consistency in the imitation and distribution of locally created design elements (Fig. 99). Regional businesses were influential in building and designing hotels, neon signs, and balconies. A distinctive bowed metal balcony common to many commercial structures also appears in private homes. The Allied Sign Company was responsible for many of the town's lighting designs, and the Mitchell Welding Company created most balconies. Builders frequently re-used plans, receiving sign-offs from the town's only architect. In these cases, where the role of the architect is diminished, further study should focus on the manufacturing companies responsible for mass-producing such details.

Figure 99. El Ray Motel/Caribbean Hotel. HABS No. NJ-1189-1.

Cape May

Travel guides documenting the rise and fall of Cape May's popularity in the early twentieth century point to competition from other shore resorts as the main reason for a noticeable decline in tourism. But the Works Progress Administration guide published in the 1930s assured potential visitors that "the city does not fret over its loss of patronage." [34] As one contemporary travel writer observed, Cape May was upstaged by Atlantic City in the 1920s and Wildwood in the 1950s. After the 1962 hurricane, the city began a preservation effort leading to extensive restoration of its architecture and strict enforcement of building codes. Along with this attention toward the built environment came a number of exotic restaurants, which also contributed to the resort's new image. [35] Today, Cape May offers a combination of Victorian culture packaged in scenic tours and standard boardwalk fare like skeetball and pork rolls. Classier gift shops selling ethnic artifacts, animal sculptures, and "Cape May" apparel are also plentiful in the Washington mall area, and antique stores can be discovered tucked away in unlikely corners.

Atlantic City

Characterizing various attitudes toward Atlantic City Boardwalk life in 1939, the WPA guide to the city remarked that "to some it represents the concentrated Babbitry of America on parade." [36] Today, the island has been so transformed by development that many visitors, entranced by the sparkle of the casinos and the sea, do not even realize they've left the mainland. The proximity of the other communities also often goes unnoticed, as Atlantic City isolates itself in an aura of "anything's possible."

Driving through Atlantic City on the way to the boardwalk, first-time visitors might question the mythology of wealth and wonder surrounding the resort. The contrast between neighborhoods of decaying houses and dilapidated commercial buildings (left over from prosperous Victorian years that lingered into the 192Os) and the more contemporary boardwalk development first became noticeable in the 1950s. A combination of factors resulted in the city's decline as a family resort: competition from other shore towns, the widespread use of automobiles leading to the demise of the railroad, and a lack of interest in Atlantic City's old-fashioned convention center. [37]

In 1978, voters agreed that "casino gaming" used as "a unique tool for urban development" might bring back nineteenth-century propriety and traditions. [38] Today, the boardwalk is lined with the glimmering towers and turrets of Bally's, Trump Tower, and ten other casinos (Fig. 100). The Disneyland-style, bright plastic and gold-colored "architecture," contributes to the sense of distance from dilapidated commercial streets and residential neighborhoods. But the wall of casinos and stores lining the boardwalk has not resulted in urban renewal. Perhaps the building of low-income housing near the marina, sponsored by Harrah's, will begin to improve living conditions in that part of the city. In 1991, the freshly-built units appeared conspicuously new and vacant amid characteristic urban blight. The Atlantic City of spectacle and excess has retreated from the boardwalk to the casino interior. However, even the most critical visitor is drawn by Atlantic City's power to embody certain American traditions. The real Atlantic City may be thirteen casinos against a backdrop of economic disparity, but visitors still bring home images of prosperity on boxes of taffy, postcards, and dinner plates.

Figure 100. Atlantic City casinos, Trump Taj Mahal. Chuck Milliken. 1994.

Asbury Park

While other Jersey Shore resorts declined after the railroad boom, Asbury Park continued to evolve, achieving popularity as a full-time resort community. "Asbury Park offers you welcome—welcome to the year 'round playground of the inviting Atlantic Coast," declared a 1938 souvenir folder. [39] A haven of escape during troubled times, Asbury Park prospered throughout the Great Depression. Postcards depict the crowded, colorful, and well-kept boardwalk, offering candy shops for the sweet tooth, teahouses for the thirsty, and miniature golf to satisfy the putt-putt craze of the 1930s (Fig. 101). Noisier games were found at Palace Amusements on Wesley Lake next to the Mayfair Theater. The latter was a bizarre, eclectic revival-style structure, floodlit at night to resemble a movie set.

Figure 101. Asbury Park boardwalk & casino. Historic postcard.

In September 1944, a hurricane that damaged the boardwalk and destroyed a number of concession buildings prompted city officials to redesign the waterfront. A consulting firm was called in on the advice of New York's powerful parks commissioner, Robert Moses. The firm urged Asbury Park to clear away most amusements, tear down the casino, and adapt to the automobile age with "parking fields" for 1,800 cars behind the boardwalk. [40] By the 1950s, Asbury Park, "while much changed from 1920," was still acknowledged "as the Duchess of the North Shore," one chronicler of New Jersey reported (Fig. 102). During the 1960s, the city suffered from a loss of commercial momentum as well as tourist trade. Race riots in the latter part of the decade dealt the local economy a severe blow from which it has yet to recover. The lyrics of Bruce Springsteen focused attention on Asbury Park's dilapidated condition in the 1970s, but the Boss' rock 'n' roll prominence was not enough to revive an entire city.

Tourist attractions remaining in Asbury Park only dimly recall more exuberant times. Surrounded by weed-ridden parking lots and dilapidated commercial buildings, the once-famous amusement park is now abandoned. A half-finished condominium development facing the boardwalk suggests one unsuccessful solution to the city's complex problem. In 1986, an optimistic tourist guide predicted that such projects would encourage the rise of a new Asbury Park, reviving its early reputation. "The $550 million redevelopment plan will give Asbury Park a chance once again to become a thriving community and make it practically unrecognizable in ten years to those who recall only neon lights and the all-night sounds of rock 'n' roll." [41] Seven years later, the city still awaits the arrival of this plan and its accompanying crowds.

Figure 102. Asbury Park Boardwalk. Alfred Holden, 1991.

Long Branch

Already falling from favor toward the end of the nineteenth century, Long Branch experienced a series of twentieth-century misfortunes that contributed to its decline. The city's slow demise as a resort can be traced back to 1893, when the New Jersey legislature shut down horse racing, one of its chief recreational attractions. Among the state senators who supported the bill was James A. Bradley, founder of Asbury Park, an advocate of temperance, clean living, and obviously Asbury Park, too, which coincidentally "succeeded in drawing away a substantial portion of the wealthiest visitors to Long Branch." [42]

The "cottagers" hung around longer. Presidents William McKinley and Woodrow Wilson were yet to come, and more Guggenheims would build mansions there. At the dawn of the automobile age, car racing and horse shows enjoyed moments of fashion, but the loss of gambling was a blow to an economy based nearly exclusively on resort trade. [43] Nineteenth-century entrepreneurs who experimented with local manufacturing such as shirt, cigar, and button factories, and a mail-order house, were unable to succeed. [44] Storms consumed the famous sea-bathing beaches. Gangs moved into the city, altering the social, and finally the physical, composition of neighborhoods. Publicized gang-related murders did little to promote summer vacationing. As the resort economy dwindled, the dilapidated state of the city reflected its loss of patronage. Not even the reopening of Monmouth Park racetrack (Fig. 103), the closing of which contributed to Long Branch's rapid fall from favor, could restore the Branch's tarnished image. [45] Today, hope for a renaissance of nineteenth-century prosperity lies in beachfront development; a Hilton Hotel may inspire others to build and encourage the remodeling of remaining historic structures. [46]

Figure 103. Horse Racing, Monmouth Park. ca. 1870s. The New Jersey Coast and Pines

Trains from Manhattan still roll through towns up and down the north Jersey shore, travelling around the Amboys, inland across Monmouth County's many creeks and swamps, and over the Navesink and Shrewsbury rivers to the Atlantic beaches of Long Branch, following a route laid down more than a century ago. However, many riders of New Jersey Transit are now commuters rather than seaside revelers, and the landscape of Long Branch has become fairly suburban. Generations of debate over whether it is a resort or a city seem to have been resolved: the ranch houses and road-generated sprawl built over its meadowlands have made Long Branch a more typical American city. By 1940, authors for the New Jersey Writers' Program declared that it "has expanded from a tiny town struggling to preserve its identity against a giant resort to a mature American city." [47]

Conclusion

The 1991 HABS report on Southern New Jersey and the Delaware Bay concludes with recommendations for a companion survey of shore themes and resources. Although common ground can be found for a comparison of both coasts, the report's historians chose to focus on the development of the resort industry along the shore from Cape May to Sandy Hook. Obviously, the two regions differ in terms of extant cultural resources. While South Jersey is scattered with industries that have moved away and cities that have diminished, the Atlantic coastal region continues to draw a significant population of summer visitors.

The history of resorts in South Jersey illustrates the difference between the primarily agricultural landscape of the Delaware Bay and the more urban, commercial north. At the end of the nineteenth and into the early twentieth century, three amusement parks existed in the part of South Jersey below Route 47; Tumbling Dam amusement park in Bridgeton, Riverview Beach Park in Pennsville, and Millville's Luna Park were popular recreational destinations via trolley. But South Jersey parks were not able to keep pace with the automobile. When vehicular travel became the predominant means of access to the shore, visitation declined. All three parks were closed by the 1950s and little remains of them. Not coincidentally, this was the decade of the Garden State Parkway; the new north-south automobile route provided smooth transportation up and down the coast, and resort cities that flourished had adapted to the changing lifestyle it represented. Today, much of the history of southern New Jersey and the Delaware Bay can only be found in photographs, archival records, and the memories of a few aged residents. Although a great deal of shore architecture has also been lost, much remains to remind modern visitors of the past in the undeveloped crossroads, towns, and villages. More significantly, shore cities have continued to build and evolve. Without pretending to be a survey of regional architecture, this report has highlighted characteristic historical and extant resources. In conjunction with its companion volume, HABS's study of a cross-section of significant cities and buildings on the Jersey Shore is intended to promote further study of the region.