Corbusier in Asbury Park

Not your typical townhouse development 

I really like this little row of townhouses. They're in the northern part of Asbury Park, N.J., and there's nothing like them anywhere nearby. The five townhouses you're looking at are only a part of the development. There's another five behind them, separated by a very pleasant little walkway.

I just love this walkway. Here's another shot. 

I was wondering when these buildings were built, so I scooted over to Monmouth County's Open Public Records Search System. Nine were built in 1930, and one was built in 1931. They are all located in block 3705. 

Here's a link to the OPRS. 

At the front of the walkway between the two pods of five buildings, there is a sign telling people they're at Deal Lake Court. For a long time I had assumed that the walkway was called Deal Lake Court, but the maps I was looking at online indicated that Deal Lake Court is actually the name of the driveway that provides access to the parking lot of the neighboring development. I've decided that this is a problem to be solved another day, and quite possibly by someone other than me. 

Are We Looking at Art Deco?

Last year, Dan Jacobson, who is the mastermind behind a local newspaper called Tri City News, wrote an article about the townhouses in his paper. He reported that he had gotten "hold of documents from the 1930s" that list the developer "as Erwin S. Wolfson." (Tri City News, July 17, 2025, pp. 26, 45. This is a print-only newspaper, so good luck finding it.) 

It turns out that Wolfson went on to build the Pan Am building (now the Met Life building) that looms over Grand Central terminal on Park avenue in New York city. As Jacobson puts it, after his interlude in Asbury Park, Wolfson wound up as "one of the most important builders in the country, and the most prominent in Manhattan." 

Before coming to Asbury Park, Wolfson had been working in real estate in Florida, where Jacobson tells us he absorbed the "Florida deco" style that was so popular in Miami Beach. 

I confess I am perpetually confused by the many different schools of architecture that were swirling around in the early part of the twentieth century, perhaps because they were all influencing one another. All of these new movements were responding to the same stimuli - most particularly the rise of steel and concrete (and glass) as materials that could displace the wood and masonry (stone and brick) that, historically, had been the builder's go-to materials. 

Jacobson calls the Asbury Park development "vintage 1930s art deco." I liked his argument, but I wasn't sure. 

Or Maybe It's Corbusier

Then one day I was in the Free Library in Philadelphia, checking a quote in a Le Corbusier book entitled Vers une architecture - and I saw this drawing.  (The book is also available online. To see it, click here. This is the second edition. The drawing is on page 210.) 

Okay, I said to myself. I was in a library after all, and you're not supposed to shout Eureka! in a library. You might notice a striking similarity, along with considerable differences, between this drawing and the development at Deal Lake Court. To refresh your memory, here's another photo of Deal Lake Court, this one a night shot. 

This little plantation of town homes in Asbury Park was not designed by Corbusier, but I think it was clearly influenced by him. There's a lot more open space in Corbu's drawing, but the general arrangement of masses is strikingly similar, and the thing that puts me over the top is the treatment of the roof, or rooves (I can't resist the occasional obsolete spelling). 

The idea of turning the roof into habitable space was not original with Corbusier. but it was central to his thinking, and worked reasonably well with the new materials that were available. 

I could prattle on, but perhaps I'll just show a few more pictures. These are very nice buildings, and if Corbusier had ever become aware of them, I expect he would have approved. 

Searching for an Architect

I found myself facing a missing link. The developer, Erwin Wolfson, was clearly comfortable working in a number of styles - for instance, the Pan Am (now Met Life) building was designed in the International style by Richard Roth, Walter Gropius, and Pietro Belluschi. If I really wanted to nail down what was going on in Deal Lake Court, I needed to know more about the architect. 

I asked the folks at the Monmouth county archive if they might have any information about the architect, or even just his name, which would appear on plans and other documents. I got a very nice note back saying they didn't have such documentation, and suggesting that I contact the city of Asbury Park. 

And so I found myself filling out and submitting yet another form. This process may sound tedious and repetitive, but I actually enjoy it in small doses. In a few days I received a response stating: "No records responsive to your request." 

So I figured I'd drilled enough dry holes, and couldn't think of any other places to go. I couldn't find anything on the state's website that seemed remotely appropriate. It's possible that there is an Erwin S. Wolfson Archive somewhere that houses his business papers and correspondence. 

But I was done. I can't prove that Deal Lake Court was inspired by Le Corbusier. All I can say is that it really looks that way. To me. 

________

While I was trying to find the architect who designed Deal Lake Court, I decided to ask the kindly electrons of the internet to tell me about any Corbusier-style architects in New Jersey. They helpfully came up with one, and although he has nothing to do with the story at hand, I thought you might like to know a little bit about him. 

Edward Bowser Jr. was born in 1925 and grew up in East Orange, N.J. His father, Edward Sr., was an architectural draftsman. Bowser Jr. graduated from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1948. In 1949 and 1950 he was an apprentice in Le Corbusier's design studio in Paris, working particularly on the Unite d'habitation project in Marseille, which was added to the UNESCO World Heritage list in 2016. 

Bowser then returned to New Jersey and had a successful career primarily designing private homes, but also producing a number of commercial buildings. (For more, see this article in New Jersey Monthly and a very nice short segment from PBS.) 

In 1977, Bowser and his wife, a clothing designer, moved to Ghana as part of the Pan-African Skills Project. In Ghana they opened and ran a vocational school. Bowser also became a close friend of the president of Ghana, Jerry Rawlings. 

In 1995, Bowser died of cerebral malaria. He is buried in Ghana. 

_______

There seems to be some confusion about the publication date of the second edition of Le Corbusier's Vers une architecture. Wikipedia lists it as 1924, footnoting its source as the 2007 English translation by John Goodman, entitled Le Corbusier Toward an Architecture, citing page 41 of the introduction by Jean-Louis Cohen, which asserts a publication date of 1924 but provides no evidence. 

I suspect that Cohen is getting the 1924 date from the introduction to the French second edition, which is dated Novembre 1924 on page vi. I haven't found any other publication date printed in this book. However, the copy I have linked to is the copy received by the Bibliotheque nationale, and it has a date stamped on its front: 1925. This "depot legale" date is technically not a publication date, but it is likely a lot closer than the date on the introduction. It's possible that the Fondation Le Corbusier in Paris has documentation that would settle the publication date definitively, but I'm going to leave the matter here. 

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