Layers at the Beach Front

Urban Design in Asbury Park

Asbury Park, 1979.

Every beach town begins with three things - the ocean, the beach, the inland.

Add people. People who live in big cities where it gets very hot in the summer. Back in the day, there was no air conditioning. Even shade trees could be in short supply.

You need to get people from the cities to the beach. In the early days this involved stage coaches and boats. Then along came the railroads, and very soon you had the modern beach resort.

What did the people come for? Mainly, I think, to cool off. But then they also needed to eat and sleep, and they required amusement. And so the beach town created itself to satisfy their needs.

7th Avenue beach, 1982.

Early Days

Asbury Park was hardly America's first beach resort, or even New Jersey's. Cape May had been attracting guests from far-flung places since the eighteenth century.

Atlantic City, like Asbury Park, was a new foundation. In the case of Atlantic City, the railroad actually came first. The Camden and Atlantic Railroad received its charter in 1852 and the first train ran to Atlantic City on July 1, 1854. The city received its charter in 1854 and was incorporated in 1855. (Charles E. Funnell, By the Beautiful Sea: The Rise and High Times of That Great American Resort, Atlantic City, 1975, pp. 4-6. This little gem of a book got its start as a history dissertation at the University of Pennsylvania.)

Atlantic City's growth in the early years was slow, but it took off after the Civil War, and sprouted its first boardwalk in 1870. (Funnell, pp. 9, 11.)

Asbury Park got its start after the Civil War, as an offshoot of the Methodist camp meeting in Ocean Grove. In 1870, New York manufacturer James Bradley paid $90,000 for 500 acres just north of Ocean Grove, and in the spring of 1871 he had the land clearcut from the southern boundary of Wesley Lake to the northern boundary of Deal Lake. The existing dunes were leveled. (Daniel Wolff, Fourth of July, Asbury Park, 2005, 2022, pp. 13-14.)

1979.

The New York and Long Branch Railroad extended its line to Asbury in 1875, and in 1877 Asbury got its boardwalk, extending from Wesley Lake in the south to Deal Lake in the north. (Wolff, p. 16.)

The boardwalk is still there, and the North Jersey Coast Line is still there, but there's something else that's no longer there. A 1905 pamphlet from the Pennsylvania Railroad, prepared for a meeting of the National Education Association in Asbury Park, explains that visitors can use their trains to get from Philadelphia to Asbury Park by two different routes:

"To and from Philadelphia one has a choice of two routes, one following the main line of the railroad between Philadelphia and New York to Monmouth Junction, thence cutting through the famous pine-belt of Northern New Jersey to the coast at Sea Girt, and Asbury Park; the other leaving Market Street Wharf, Philadelphia, and running in almost a straight line to the shore at Sea Side Park, and thence up the coast to Asbury Park." 

From the pamphlet.

To see the whole pamphlet, click here. 

Needless to say, these rail connections to Philadelphia no longer exist. 

Amusements: The Big Three

Just as Asbury Park was not the first resort on the Jersey shore, so also it was not a great innovator. For instance, its boardwalk (1877) had the example of Atlantic City (1870).

As for amusements, when it comes to what I call the Big Three Rides - the carousel, the Ferris wheel, the rollercoaster - all were born elsewhere. (Each of these rides has its own pre-history, but what we need to look at here is the appearance of the modern ride that we know today.)

July 1982.

Judith Adams has this to say about the origin of the modern carousel: "Frederick Savage, a machinist working in King's Lynn, England, around 1870, is credited with mounting a steam engine to the center truck of his carousel; he also designed and patented the first overhead cranking device, allowing the up-and-down galloping motion of the animals." (Judith A. Adams, The American Amusement Park Industry: A History of Technology and Thrills, 1991, p. 10.)

As for the arrival of the carousel in the United States, Adams tells us this: "In 1867 Gustav A. Dentzel, an immigrant from Germany, redesigned his cabinetmaking shop in Philadelphia to accommodate the manufacture of carousels. His early devices were the first in America to be operated by steam engine." (P. 10.)

Charles Denson, in his Coney Island: Lost and Found (2002), tells us that the first carousel at Coney was installed in 1875. It was built by Charles Loof. (P. 286.)

As for Asbury Park, the website Palace Museum Online reports that another Loof carousel was installed at Palace Amusements in 1888.

(If you're interested in how carousels may have roots as far back as knights in shining armor, here's an article in Smithsonian. And if you've heard of "reaching for the brass ring" and have no idea what that means, this article is for you.)

7th Avenue pool, 1982.

The modern Ferris wheel first appeared at the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago. George W.G. Ferris designed and built the enormous wheel, which was 250 feet in diameter and carried 36 cars, each of which could hold up to 60 people. (For more, see this article in Smithsonian.)

(The indefatigable researchers at Wikipedia report that, in 1892, William Somers of Atlantic City erected three large wooden wheels in Atlantic City, Asbury Park, and Coney Island; he later sued Ferris for patent infringement and lost. For articles touching on Somers in the Asbury Park Press, click here and here. For Somers' patent, click here.)

The rollercoaster was invented in Coney Island. LaMarcus Thompson built the Gravity Pleasure Switchback Railroad there in 1884. The people loved it, and Thompson went on to build coasters throughout the United States and in Europe. (For more, click here.)

Who invented the hot dog is a much disputed topic, but I feel I can safely report that it was not invented in Asbury Park.

Asbury Park didn't invent any of the pieces of a beach resort, but it put them together extremely well.

Coney Island

Coney Island, on the other hand, didn't have a boardwalk until 1923. In fact, the haphazard way in which the resort was developed managed to create something of a mess. Bath houses lined the beach, along with other structures, effectively blocking access to the beach and the ocean until you had paid your coins and passed through a bath house. 

1982.

Compared to Asbury Park, Coney Island got an early start. Originally it was part of the hamlet of Gravesend, which received its charter in 1645. (Brooklyn annexed Gravesend much later, in 1894, and then Brooklyn became a part of New York City in 1898.)

The island itself was virtually uninhabited for many years. Local farmers used it for winter pasturage of animals, such as cows, horses, and pigs. In 1727 a man named Barent Johnson purchased some land on the island, moved there, and set up a farm.

Around 1800, boating parties were arriving, having seaside picnics, and occasionally sticking their toes in the water. So perhaps this is the beginning of the beach resort.

There was access to the island without using a boat. At the time Coney Island Creek did separate the island from Long Island, but there was a shallow bit of the creek, known imaginatively as the "fording place." (Much later a substantial part of the creek was filled in, joining Coney to the mother island.)

Boardwalk, 1984.

The first bridge over Coney Island Creek appeared in 1823, soon followed by the first hotel on the island. Other hotels came along, and in 1862 Coney Island got its first rail connection, a horse car line owned by the Coney Island and Brooklyn Railroad. (For the above history, see Denson, Coney Island, chapter 1.)

After the Civil War there was a rush to build rail lines to the beach, and by 1880 a map shows three steamboat piers along the shore and also three railroad lines, all with terminals practically on the beach. (Denson, pp. 14, 19, 27.)

Hotels, bathhouses, and restaurants proliferated, and Coney Island had arrived. The first carousel, as we have noted, appeared in 1875. The world's first enclosed amusement park, Sea Lion Park, arrived in 1895, to be followed by the Big Three amusement parks: Steeplechase Park (1897-1966), Luna Park (1903-1946), and the spectacular but short-lived Dreamland (1904-1911). (Denson, pp. 26, 32-39, 139-140.)

The problem with all this development was that there was no comprehensive plan. As Denson puts it, "Coney Island never had a blueprint or anything resembling a master plan." P. 1.)

Boardwalk arcade, 1984.

This lack of an enforceable overall vision allowed the business community to effectively privatize the beach. Imposing plans retroactively takes a lot of time and costs a lot of money. Denson again: "The shorefront was in private hands, and landowners were building out over the beach to the surf line and fencing off the shorefront. The beach soon became a patchwork of tiny strips of sand that disappeared altogether at high tide." (P. 27.)

Eventually New York's political leadership decided to reclaim the beach for the public. Central to this endeavor was the construction of a boardwalk. In 1910 the New York City Board of Aldermen put forward a plan. "Under the existing conditions at Coney Island today," explained Alderman James E. Campbell, "persons are prohibited from walking along the beach except patrons of various owners of the bathhouses or such other businesses as there are along the beachfront." (Denson, pp. 41-42.)

And the boardwalk opened in 1923. Atlantic City's boardwalk came in 1870; Asbury Park's in 1877.

Gondola lift, boardwalk, 1978.

Layers

In Asbury Park, James Bradley had a plan and the power to enforce it. After all, he was the guy who bought the 500 acres and founded the town. It's fair to say that not everything has worked out according to Bradley's vision. At the same time W. E. B. Dubois was writing "the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color line," Bradley didn't see anything wrong with the color line. Less important, but more amusing: When it came to alcohol, he expected Asbury to be a dry town. Still, the basic physical plan was and continues to be very strong. Let's have a look at the design of the beachfront today. It consists of a series of layers.

Our first layer is the ocean itself, which at times has a remarkably large population of humans. We can start out at the horizon, where cargo ships, barges, and (in better times) cruise ships pass along at varying speeds, occasionally going hull down at the horizon and then disappearing completely. Closer in there are often fishing boats - small craft and larger day boats that bring loads of anglers from the piers along Shark River, four miles to the south. A few sailboats, but predominantly these sailors are motorized.

Further in by the shore we have swimmers and waders and people fishing in the surf, either in big rubber boots or standing on a rock jetty. There are also quite a few surfers these days. 

On the beach itself some people play volleyball or other ball sports, but mainly they sit in chairs or lie on blankets, possibly under an umbrella. Reading dog-eared paperback copies of War and Peace seems to have given way to reading iPhones. From time to time people may go swimming, or for a walk along the waterline, or they may help small children build sandcastles. And if they need a snack, they go up  to the boardwalk.

Boardwalk ride, 1982.

The boardwalk is a pedestrian street located just inland of the beach, raised several feet above the sand, and paved with wooden planks. It allows people to circulate easily along the entire beachfront. It is also a platform for gazing out at the ocean without getting sand in your shoes. And finally, it is lined on the shore side with restaurants, stores, and the remains of the city's amusement industry.

People move freely among these zones - into the water, out of the water, up to the boardwalk. The layers are permeable, but each is a distinct experience.

Ocean Avenue is at least potentially another layer. It runs just inland of the boardwalk, separated by the pavilions, which have had a remarkable variety of uses over the years.  In the seventies and eighties, I understand, Ocean Avenue actually was a distinct zone, at least in the evening, when young people used it and neighboring Kingsley to enact what was essentially an automotive version of the old Spanish paseo, where boys would walk around the town square in one direction, and girls, normally accompanied by duennas, or chaperones, walked around in the opposite direction. However, on what was called The Circuit, duennas were in noticeably short supply. (The online pickings for the history of The Circuit are slender. To see two stories, click here and here.)

I don't think The Circuit is coming back, but it would be nice to think of something special that Ocean and Kingsley could do. At present, they are useful access roads lined with extensive curbside parking, but I do feel that something is missing. I just don't know what.

Beach entrance from Sunset Avenue pavilion, 1982.

One More Layer

And there is a fifth layer, starting just west of Kingsley and extending inland past the city limit and really up to Route 35, a north-south suburban highway dotted with malls and car dealerships. I had never thought about this before reading the 1905 Pennsylvania Railroad pamphlet, but here you go:

"Visitors to Asbury Park are impressed at once with the delightful sense of the beauty and comfort of the private residences and cottages which line its shaded avenues. It is preeminently a 'home' city. In no large seashore resort on the Atlantic Coast does cottage life enter so largely into the social make-up as here."

The availability of a green country town just two or three blocks from the beach was a major selling point for the Pennsylvania Railroad. Here are their marketing people at full steam:

"At Asbury Park one finds a charming blending of the sylvan and the marine. It is a park on the brink of the sea. The wooded highlands of New Jersey and the ocean's restless waves almost meet across the narrow strand. One turns from the sandy beach, lapped by the surges of the sea, to the broad streets of the city, bordered with spreading trees, whose thick foliage in some instances forms leafy arbors over the entire avenue. Those accustomed to the noontide glare at some seaside resorts will appreciate the grateful shade these trees afford during the summer season."

Setting aside the flowery language, these marketers are speaking to us from 1905, telling us that the layers do not end at the boardwalk, and that the juxtaposition of all these very distinct experiences, which any visitor can pass through, is one of the attractions of this unusual seaside resort.

1980.

See also City of Lights, Tillie's Family Tree.