Building Beachwood, Part Three

On December 16^th, 1914, an article in the New York Tribune headlined, “Beachwood Just Laughs at Storms” recounted a recent winter storm which “caused such havoc and property loss [in the surrounding area, yet] left no traces… along Beachwood’s mile of water frontage.”

The paper attributed this to its position away from the Barnegat Bay, and went on to describe all the safety features and recreation amenities, stating that construction officially began the day before, placing this official first date of construction in Beachwood at December 15th, 1914.

Two weeks later, on December 30^th, the Tribune ran another article under the headline “Rapid Progress in Beachwood Work”.

It described that work “is progressing despite ice and snow, by leaps and bounds” and that a letter written by a group of men who distributed tires for the Packard automobile company along the eastern United States was received stating that they had purchased a site in Beachwood on which to build “an up-to-date garage for the accommodation of the residents,” of whom they would be part, having also purchased lots for their bungalows from the Tribune promotion.

The article ran on to describe more of Nickerson’s work, including that “about seventy men were now at work laying out streets, putting up street signs and block numbers, numbering lots, cutting through and improving roadways and building tennis courts. If necessary, to have things in readiness for next summer the force will be increased.”

A week later, January 8^th, 1915, the New Jersey Courier ran with an article titled, “Start Several Buildings at Spiles Point, Beachwood”. In it was heavily detailed the first buildings constructed by the Tribune under supervision of Nickerson.

“The Beachwood tract is the busiest along shore just now. Besides laying out streets and avenue, cutting off timber on these avenues, blasting stumps and cleaning out underbrush, the New Year was marked by the starting of at least four new buildings. Three of these are at the Spiles Point, the other, a union railroad depot, at the crossing of the Central and Pennsylvania railroads.”

The Dining Hall, later borough hall, constructed approximately on what today is the Mayo Park Playground.

“On the high bluff, just above the point of the Spiles, a dining room has been built, in the shape of a one-story bungalow, 30×60 feet, and a kitchen annex in the rear. This will have a view down the river.”

The Lodge's patio, circa 1920.

The Lodge's patio area, Winter 2010. The fountain has been turned into a planter for the borough.

“In front of it, to the north, has been started a hotel or rooming house, 73×100 feet in size, built in the old Spanish style, one story high, and, with a patio, or courtyard, in the centre. This will contain thirty-seven sleeping rooms, and will be run in connection with the dining room. From its point of vantage on the brow of the bluff the eye can sweep up the river to Toms River village, or down the stream to Island Heights. The location is superb.”

Beachwood Bathhouses, Beachwood Beach, circa 1915.

“On the lower ground, at the foot of the bluff, in the filled in spot where the pond was, and where Toms River boys for generations have waded to pick water lilies and kill water snakes, the bathhouses are started. There will be three rows of them, covering a space 32×46 feet.

“The building of the bathhouses here is particularly satisfactory to Toms River people, who had been fearing that the development of Spiles Point meant that their ancient bathing privilege would be taken from them, and the point become hedged in as private property. It is understood that the beach front at the Beachwood tract is to be kept open to the public and that all lot owners will have an equal share in its use. With bathhouses there many Toms River people will avail themselves of the convenience.”

“The depot will be 20×40 feet in size, and will be used by both railroads. It is located at the crossing of the two roads and also of the main north and south avenue of Beachwood.”

“Plans are prepared for a large clubhouse, which is also to be started in the spring on the bluff overlooking the river.

“The station is expected to be built very soon. None of these buildings is to be pretentious or costly. They are being built to supply present day needs, and as the resort grows probably be displaced with more permanent structures. But they go to show that Beachwood means business and that something is coming of the new development. The work is also giving jobs to many local people who would otherwise be sitting around stoves and wondering how they could get through the winter.”

Spring Street, circa 1915.

“Scores of streets are being laid out on the tract. So far about all that is done to this line is to clear up the street of all traces of underbrush and remove the stumps with dynamite and stake off the lots. Some grading has been done, however, and more is contemplated. The Beachwood proposition, backed by a big daily paper, is making quite a furore in New York, and it is said by New Yorkers who come down this way that the lots are going fast.”

The progress in Beachwood did not go unnoted in other local papers and municipalities. On January 29^th, the Ocean County Review printed beneath its Pine Beach section that, “It is pretty quiet here this winter, but we can hear the dynamite charges exploding at Beachwood without paying admission.”

Indeed, Nickerson and his crew weren’t the only ones busy that winter. February 1915 saw the release and distribution of a 38-page pamphlet very modestly titled, “The Greatest Subscription Premium Ever Offered and the Reason Why”.

Interspersed between pages of ad copy determined to make the average reader jump at investing were a number of photographs depicting the natural waterfront, sailboats both on the Toms River and docked at Huddy Park, cleared roads, the Central Railroad of New Jersey Toms River Station, and the Atlantic City Boulevard completely devoid of any development.

Promotion booklet for Mayo's Lakewood Club resort through the Chicago Evening Post, 1912.

Fox Lake, as depicted in Mayo's 1912 promotional booklet for his earlier resort at Lakewood Club, Muskegon County, Michigan.

As we can see, it wasn’t the first of such pamphlets, borrowing heavily on Mayo’s earlier land promotion of Lakewood Club, Michigan.

William Randolph Hearst, owner of the New York American, among others.

Meanwhile, Watson and the postal inspectors were themselves hard at work questioning those who wrote letters of endorsement for the Tribune promotion which had appeared in subsequent materials.

One of these letters came from E.P. Robinson, M.D., later profiled in Butler’s 1924 Beachwood Directory as being born of English parents on St. James Island in Barbados, who later followed his dream of coming to America as a teenager, working first a pharmacist in Philadelphia before continuing his career and education in New York City. By the time of the Tribune promotion, he was married and had a son in his late teens.

In the letter he wrote, which was published by the Tribune as part of its promotion campaign, the accomplished doctor praised the newspaper in detail for the advantages of the Beachwood tract and stated that not only did he plan an extensive summer residence but that his wife and son purchased their own lots, as well.

Testifying about this letter and Robinson’s later statements regarding it, Watson admitted he could not find his original notes and instead recounted the conversation from memory:

“I visited Dr. Robinson myself, in company with one of my investigators, and interviewed him, and I swear that endorsement is not on the level. The doctor said – I have a report which I made within an hour after the interview, and I will stand on that report rather than on what I say now, but I will try to recall what he said. It was to the effect that he did not know where these lots were, and he had changed his mind, and he did not think he would ever build there, and he gave this endorsement to the Tribune, but he had not expected that people would come running in there and asking him about it, and that he had since requested the Tribune to take it out of the booklet, and that he might some time use his lots for a public garage down there; and he told me where they were, and I asked him if he realized that that was about a mile off the main road and that you could not drive an automobile in there unless it was equipped with an aeroplane on top of it to lift it over the roads. In other words, it was too ridiculous for consideration.”

Oddly, on a later day of testimony following statements by the postal inspectors themselves, Watson recanted and requested that this statement and all matter of the letters be removed from the record as he could not find his records on the matter and it had been over a year from the conversation so his memory may be incorrect.

Neither postal investigator had any testimony regarding these letters.

Stranger still is the fact that the lots Dr. Robinson ultimately built upon is just one block from the waterfront and on Beachwood Boulevard, the original resort’s main road. It is unclear at this point of research whether this was the original plot of land purchased through the initial Tribune promotion, or if he purchased it at a later date from a second party, or some other event we are unaware of.

Adding to this odd matter is the fact that the New York Tribune made a point to specifically advertise Dr. Robinson’s building plans in early March 1915 with an article titled, “To Build at Beachwood – Plans Being Prepared for New Cottage at Resort”:

“Architects’ plans for the erection of one of the first bungalows to be built at Beachwood, N.J., are being prepared for Dr. E.P. Robinson, of 116 West Thirty-ninth Street, New York. Dr. Robinson, who was one of the first to obtain lots at the new beach resort which the Tribune is establishing, will build a cottage for occupancy throughout the entire year.

“The new cottage will stand back from the beach some little distance and will be artistic in its surroundings. Construction work on the house is contemplated with the coming of warm weather. It is planned to have the cottage ready for occupancy this summer.

“In addition to Dr. Robinson, lots are held at Beachwood by his wife and son.”

We may never know the true events surrounding Dr. Robinson’s lots or his involvement with the Tribune promotional campaign, but what cannot be denied is that the doctor had a very well built, attractive bungalow constructed at the corner of Barnegat Avenue and Beachwood Boulevard, which stands to this day.

Dr. Robinson's home, Winter 2009.

Next:

Read about investigator’s secret trip to the incomplete resort, alleged scandal within the Tribune offices and the road to the Memorial Day opening, in the next edition of the Building Beachwood series.

Building Beachwood, Part Two

February 13, 1914 cover of the New Jersey Courier.

On February 13, 1914, the front page headline of the Toms River/Ocean County weekly, the New Jersey Courier, announced “Pine Bay Tract is Sold for $90,000/Said to Be a Record-Making Price”. Curiously, these new purchasers are never mentioned by name.

Part of the bluffs at Cold Spring, Winter 2010.

The article goes on to describe the land as it was before any work had been completed: “The tract has a mile and a quarter river frontage, including the

Spiles Point area, Fall 2009.

Squally Cove, today Windy Cove, Spring 2009.

bluff at Cold Spring, the point of the Spiles [both later part of Beachwood Beach], and the bluff on the west shore of Squally Cove [renamed Windy Cove], the river frontage, running from Cedar Point [at today’s South Toms River] to the head of Squally Cove, where it meets the Buhler property, now a part of the Pine Beach tract [Pine Beach not having been incorporated until 1925; the land then was mainly known to visitors for the railroad that extended across the Toms River to Island Heights]. It extends back across both railroads and west to the Dover road [later, South Toms River], while on the south it abuts the Barnegat Park tract [in Berkeley Township, later the site of yet another notorious land promotion named Pinewald, through which was built the Royal Pines Hotel that stands today as Crystal Lake Healthcare. It’s interesting to consider that Pinewald could have incorporated itself as a borough separate from Berkeley Township as Beachwood, Pine Beach and Ocean Gate had if it succeeded in its time].

The Nickerson family home, built directly across from the entrance to Beachwood Beach, Winter 2009.

The land then changed hands from Nickerson to Mayo to Stanley D. Brown, trustee of the New York Tribune. Mystery still surrounds these transactions as no money ever changed hands between the sheriff’s sale to Nickerson, Nickerson to Mayo, and Mayo to the Tribune, yet Nickerson had already

The "hinterland" that Mayo sold at original Tribune promotion prices to the newly incorporated Beachwood Borough, in December 1917, would later become the site of today's Jakes Branch County Park. Shown here is the groundbreaking on September 26, 2006. Photo by Jason Hoger.

begun surveying the land well before a deal was set, setting aside a few choice plots, including the site where he would eventually build his family home across from the entrance to Cold Spring and Spiles Point, later Beachwood Beach; Mayo wound up owning virtually all of the waterfront area property and 5,000 lots in the tract’s southernmost “hinterland”, all of which would eventually be sold in perpetuity in December 1917 to the newly incorporated Borough of Beachwood for the original per-lot price of $19.60 for public and municipal use.

But that wouldn’t be for a while. Mayo, Nickerson and the Tribune would first face the threat of charges brought by the U.S. District Attorney’s office and U.S. Postal Service at the behest and urging of the Hearst company and its reporter, even while Nickerson was busy directing workmen to cut and blast his grid of streets out of the knotty, dense pine forest.

William Randolph Hearst, whose newspaper, the New York American, attacked the New York Tribune Beachwood land promotion as a "scheme" and sent a reporter out to drum up interest within the federal government to potentially bring Mayo and Nickerson up on charges of fraud.

Over the next eight months, while Nickerson busied himself with the land survey and subsequent layout of the new streets and avenues, Mayo, in his office at the Tribune Building in New York, worked out the details of the promotion. An item in the October 23rd. 1914 New Jersey Courier stated:

“The Berkeley Township committee at its meeting last week abandoned a number of roads where they cross over the Beachwood (formerly known as Pine Bay) tract… the roads abandoned are: the old Double Trouble road; part of the old Cedar Creek highway; Buhler’s road; a branch of Buhler’s road; and the old road running into the old Double Trouble road, beginning where the county road crosses the [Pennsylvania Railroad].

“As part of the agreement for vacating these roads, Mr. Nickerson, who represents the new owners of the property, has announced that the tract will be laid out in streets, so that these roads will be unnecessary.”

November 1914 promotional "extra" edition insert for the New York Tribune subscription/Beachwood land promotion.

One week later, October 30th, the Tribune announced to the Toms River area its plans in the pages of the Courier, likely when the land officially changed hands from Nickerson and Mayo to their ownership. Its headline proclaimed, “New York Tribune to Develop the Beachwood Tract at Spiles Point”. This announcement predated any such notice posted in their own newspaper, as well as any official promotional materials.

“One of the largest real estate deals that has been made in Toms River in many years was concluded this week, when the two thousand acre tract adjoining the town and known as Pine Bay tract was acquired by representatives of the New York Tribune. This will mean much to the future prosperity of Toms River, for the Tribune intends to improve the property and make of it a large summer resort. A club house will be erected on the shore of the river, also a yacht club building, bathing pavilion, bathing wharves, etc. The tract will be known as Beachwood, and it is expected that it will be the future summer home of many well known New York people, who will have their cottages there. The project is under the direct supervision of B.C. Mayo of the New York Tribune and the local work is in charge of A.D. Nickerson.”

An early survey map of the Beachwood tract of land, by A.D. Nickerson.

Here we can pick up Butler’s 1924 Beachwood Directory, who compiled the largest section, “A Chronological History of Beachwood”, stated to be “Pictures, in Brief Paragraphs, of the Rise and Progress of the Beautiful Resort in the Pines on Barnegat Bay, and the Social, Economic and Political Life of its Summer Population of 1,500 or More People”.

According to Butler, “the first official map of the Beachwood tract, comprising 1,763 acres, 18 lots to the acre, was filed November 11th [1914].”

November is also the month that the Tribune issued a special advertisement, dressed up to appear as an extra edition of its regular publication, “containing many illustrations and the… announcement, in large letters, on its first page: “Subscribe for the New York Tribune and secure a lot at Beautiful Beachwood. Greatest subscription premium ever offered by a newspaper – nothing equal to it was ever attempted in the United States. Act at once – secure your lot in this Summer Paradise now.” On another page came [the] assurance [that] “The Tribune does not do things halfway. A fortune has been put behind this offer. Already plans are being made to start a building company.” The price of lots was placed at $19.60 apiece, each lot carrying with it a six months’ subscription to the paper.”

New York Tribune's "Road Map" from New York City to Beachwood, as printed in the December 1, 1914 edition of the paper and reproduced in Butler's 1924 directory, but absent from the 2005 reprint. Note the "C.R.R." and "P.R.R." rail lines criscrossing the state, standing for the Central Railroad of New Jersey and Pennsylvania Railroad, which crossed at what is today roughly Route 9 (Garden State Parkway access road) and Beachwood Boulevard

On December 1st, the Mayo-Tribune promotions rolled out further, this time in a Tribune article titled “Roads to Beachwood” and depicting a large illustration of the auto routes between Manhattan and Beachwood, as well as the Central and Pennsylvania railroad lines.

The Dining Hall, later borough hall, constructed approximately on what today is the Mayo Park Playground.

Ten days later, the New Jersey Courier and New York Tribune ran articles on the burgeoning resort. The Courier’s, headlined “Marine Names for Beachwood Avenues”, recounted a Tribune article that “Nautical terms prevail in the selecting of street nomenclature adopted for Beachwood… the street signs will also bear out the meaning of the town’s name by a series denoting a variety of trees… Plans for the construction of the buildings which are to be erected on the waterfront, such as the yacht club, dining hall, club building, etc., are already under way. It is expected that the railroad station… will be completed in January.”

The rail depot, shown here c.1920, built by the New York Tribune under direction of A.D. Nickerson. Standing in roughly this spot today would place you at the intersection of Beachwood Boulevard and Route 9 (Garden State Parkway access road), facing southeast down Route 9. The station sits on what is now the small, landscaped park with a gazebo known as Robert Guilmore Park.

The Tribune’s article, titled “Fine Railroad Station for Beachwood”, verified the Courier account. “Residents of Beachwood… are to have a railroad station of their own. Plans for the building have been made and its site chosen. It will be ready for occupancy in January. The building will have the excellent accommodations of a typical suburban union railroad station… the structure itself is to be of attractive design and calculated to meet all the requirements of Beachwood residents.”

It is around this time that Victor A. Watson, a New York City native living on the Lower East Side who had made his living for the previous 17 years as a newspaper reporter with Hearst’s New York American, claimed to receive “complaints from a number of persons who wrote letters… to the effect that the New York Tribune… was backing a notorious real-estate swindle. In the course of office business the matter was turned over to me to investigate.”

The New York Tribune building, undated, shown as the center of the three late-19th century skyscrapers.

Looking into the matter, Watson noted that the Tribune was claiming to be making absolutely no profit off the land deal, opting instead to run the promotion purely as an act of friendship in an effort to boost its circulation. Skeptical, Watson looked at the numbers and found this to not be the case. After consulting with his peers, he took the information to the office of United States District Attorney H. Snowden Marshall. The case was soon assigned to two United States Postal Inspectors, [Hugh] McQuillan and [Oliver] Schaeffer.

Together with the inspectors, Watson produced what he claimed to be direct evidence of mail fraud. This consisted of mailed materials produced by the newspaper that stated they were making no money off the land deal but wished instead for good friendship by increasing their readership. Watson insisted that the Tribune was committing mail fraud because a survey of the money paid for the land tract versus what they were charging showed a high degree of profitability set to flow into Tribune coffers should the promotion be successful.

In laying out these calculations, Watson said the land was drawn out to encompass thirty to thirty-five thousand 20×100 lots to be sold at $19.60 each. Adhering to the original plat map of 1,763 acres and 18 lots to an acre, that number was exactly 31,734 lots. $19.60 multiplied by 31,734 becomes $621,986.40. He estimated that between the purchase of the property at $90,000 and adding another approximately $35,000 to developing it for the lot owners, they would have invested only $125,000 total, meaning they stood to reap an estimated profit of $496,986.40. At the time, Inspector McQuillan estimated it lower, at $300,000.

About four of these plus four six month subscriptions to the New York Tribune would get you a 80'x100' buildable lot in Beachwood in 1914.

Suspicions were raised further when Watson stated salesmen working the promotion for the Tribune would take “them down to the beach, and [then turn around] and sell [them] something back in the woods that is almost like Africa.” Watson later reflected that Beachwood was so remote that it would be still be an undeveloped and undesirable patch of land one hundred years in the future. He was so sure of this that he told the judiciary committee he would make a bet on it if he could.

The "African woods" of Beachwood, shown here in 2009 at what is now Jakes Branch County Park.

As a result, Watson and the postal inspectors began a series of covert visits to the Beachwood tract while it was under development in early 1915. Secretly, Watson also conscripted a number of men to work within the Tribune offices as spies, quietly writing up daily reports for the New York American reporter. Meanwhile, Bertram Mayo and Addison Nickerson moved forward with their work, unaware how dangerously close they were to being arrested and brought up on charges of mail fraud.

Next:

Read about the first resort buildings, reaction from a nearby community, and the further investigation of Watson and the postal inspectors, focusing in particular on one Dr. E.P. Robinson, whose home stands today at the southwest corner of Beachwood Boulevard and Barnegat Boulevard, in the next edition of the Building Beachwood series.

Building Beachwood, Part One

Undated, from Carolyn Mae Campbell's personal family photograph collection. It is unknown at this time whether any of the men present here is Addison Doane Nickerson, though an educated guess would place him as the man in the suit with the pipe if he were. If this is true, this photograph represents the only known existing image of A.D. Nickerson, land purchaser, civil engineer and bungalow builder of Beachwood.

Today we begin the first in a running series on how Beachwood was built. Specifically, we’ll be looking at the period beginning at the start of the New York Tribune’s land promotion attempt in 1912 up through the original club buildings’ completion in time for opening day, 1915.

This period was chosen to accommodate the incredibly large amount of information found between the archives at the New York Public Library, microfilm records in the Ocean County Library, and court papers related to the promotion that produced a mountain of information through testimony.

Referenced within this series will be articles from the New York Tribune, the New Jersey Courier, and the Ocean County Review as well as William Mill Butler’s Beachwood Directory and Who’s Who 1924, reprinted in 2005 by Carolyn Campbell and the Ocean County Historical Society, 1916 court testimony made during hearings before the judiciary committee to investigate U.S. District Attorney H. Snowden Marshall and other varied sources.

The information used to build this series represents our the most current known information; as we continue to research more may become known that could alter or enhance our knowledge and a future edition of this account will be present in the Beachwood Centennial book, due later this decade.

It is our goal that after the series is complete you have a very clear picture of how the tract of land that became Beachwood was acquired, designed, and built upon by the New York Tribune in anticipation of the thousands of residents that would come to plant their bungalows along its streets.

Enjoy!

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Any discussion of Beachwood would be incomplete without first looking at the two men who made it possible: Bertram Chapman Mayo and Addison Doane Nickerson.

Old North Church.

Bertram Chapman Mayo was born in the last month of the Civil War, March 23^rd, 1865, near Boston’s Old North Church, itself famous for displaying the lanterns that alerted Paul Revere of the path the British took to the fateful first battle of the American Revolution, Lexington and Concord, less than a hundred years earlier. The oldest of Noah Mayo, a fish trader on the Boston wharves, and his wife Evaline, Bertram’s home life included the upper middle class culture comfort of employing a regular, live-in servant to help his mother keep house and tend Bertram and two sisters, Daisy and Blanche, who came later. It was here, in his youth, that a series of cherished experiences in the form of regular family holidays to seaside resorts via the trolley system later became the basis for his future pursuit of success.

Seaside trolley, date/location unknown.

Addison Doane Nickerson was born two years after his future business partner, on December 12, 1867, in Harwich, Massachusetts, located at the far end of Cape Cod. The son of Thomas Nickerson and his wife, Eglentine, Addison, like Mayo, had a home life centered around the shore. His father, having grown up as the latest in a long line of sailors, earned the title master mariner when Addison was less than a year old. It would be the profession he followed all through Addison’s upbringing and those of his three other children – Thomas, Ambrose and Eglantine – of which Addison was the oldest.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, contemporary photo.

It isn’t clearly stated where Mayo and Nickerson first met, but we can assume with almost certainty that it was at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It was here that Mayo, according to Butler’s 1924 biography of him, “gave up a contemplated course” in order to pursue a career in the wholesale clothing business, while Nickerson went on to graduate in 1888 with a thesis titled, “A Study of the Question of a Tunnel in East Boston.”

A competitive streak that appeared to run strong in Mayo, causing him to leave M.I.T., apparently also made him restless.

Aftermath of the 1906 San Francisco quake.

Quickly bored of the clothing world, he next gravitated west to become general manager for a San Francisco-area newspaper that first published and instituted an immediate emergency aid center following the devastating earthquake of 1906. At that paper, the Oakland Enquirer, he established a newspaper premium of a candy giveaway that would quickly snowball into his ultimate career path of land giveaways and community building starting in the redwoods of Northern California called Cazadero Woods, and further progressing to a canyon section of Los Angeles called Beverly Glen that would later be absorbed by that city’s rapid growth later in the century and become part of Beverly Hills.

Casadero Woods, California.

Franklin Canyon at Beverly Glen, California.

During these promotions he brought his young son, Geoffrey, on board to help run the whole operation. Moving northeast toward Chicago, he honed and improved his idea for a resort in Michigan called Lakewood Club, which would for the first time incorporate a small reminder of home: a lake for sailing, fishing and swimming.

Lakewood Club, Michigan. Its clubhouse and train station closely mirrored Beachwood's.

Nickerson, meanwhile, had settled into the life of a civil engineer, and by 1910 was living in the Hudson River town of Ulster, New York, with his wife, Mary Lillian, and their two sons, Holland and Robert. Two or three years later, a meeting in California between Nickerson and Mayo would change all that.

Famous covered bridge at Ulster, New York.

Almost before he was finished in Michigan, Mayo was already moving on, this time searching for a spot along the Atlantic coast that better reminded him of his family holidays at his childhood seaside resorts.

Undeveloped Beachwood shore area, likely Windy Cove.

Lucky for us, he found it on the southern bank of the Toms River at the edge of a pristine pine forest crisscrossed by the Pennsylvania and Jersey Central railroads and cut through by a state highway between New York and Atlantic City. Contacting Nickerson and reminding him of their California meeting, it was decided that Nickerson would head up the planning and construction of the new resort, to be called Beachwood (and sometimes referred to as Beachwood Club or Beachwood-in-the-Pines), while Mayo and his son would run things out of his new position and office within the New York Tribune building in New York.

The New York Tribune building, undated. Torn down in the 1950s to allow widening of Brooklyn Bridge entrance.

1883 edition of the Tribune.

Besides facing similar challenges in this new project as the previous three, an added pressure came in the form of an investigation spearheaded by a reporter of a competing New York daily newspaper, William Randolph Hearst’s New York American. Even while Mayo and Nickerson were busy setting up what would become the most successful paper-backed community in Mayo’s career, the competition was equally busy building a federal case against the two that could halt construction of the new resort and imprison its two managers, destroying their lives and careers.

William Randolph Hearst, owner of the New York American, among others.

But first, let’s take a look back at the history of the land that would later become Beachwood.

In Pine Beach Yesterdays, a publication issued by the borough of Pine Beach to celebrate its 50^th anniversary of incorporation as a borough in 1975, author Stanley Heatley recounts activity along the Beachwood tract in the mid-nineteenth century:

“A mule-powered railway was built to haul charcoal from the hinterlands to a loading pier on the south shore of the Toms River where coasting vessels took on cargo for Philadelphia and New York. The industry died at the end of the century and the rotted piles or spiles, all that remained of the once busy pier, gave rise to the name of “The Spiles”, present-day Beachwood.

Charcoaling, as shown in Pine Beach Yesterdays, pub. 1975 by Stanley Heatley and the Borough of Pine Beach.

“In colonial times, charcoal was the fuel used to fire many bog-iron blast furnaces. Its use continued for many years until the production of iron in our area succumbed to the competition of Pennsylvania. That charcoaling was a long ago in Pine Beach was brought to light in 1954 when ground was cleared for the Pine Beach School playground. Some mothers may still remember their children coming home from school, before the playground was completed, with clothing and shoes black from old charcoal pits.”

Sometime after that, we can find evidence of the Beachwood waterfront area being popular among local residents primarily from Toms River, who used the undeveloped shore for cool recreation on hot summer days. This led to a tragic account on one such afternoon, June 20^th, 1911, when eleven-year old Toms River resident Ella Cranmer drowned while bathing with friends at Spiles Point.

June 22, 1911 cover of the New Jersey Courier, an Ocean County weekly established in 1850 as the Ocean Signal, Ocean County's first newspaper (Ocean County was formed in 1850 from the southern portion of what was then Monmouth County).

Following the cessation of shipping activity (due in large part to the closing of the Cranberry Inlet, where Ortley Beach stands today) and the turn of the century, according to Marshall hearing testimony, the land that would become Beachwood was involved in a real estate scandal where it had been sold by a company called the Pittsburgh Company to a number of Pennsylvania residents in pieces, and was to be called Hobart City, named after New Jersey native Garret Hobart, who died in late 1899 while in office as Vice President of the United States under President William McKinley.

Garret Hobart, undated.

It has also been stated from different sources that part of the land was set aside for a cemetery, but that the land was then too remote for such a use.

At some later date, the Pennsylvanian owners contracted a man named Reece Carpenter, and the Pine Bay Hotel, Land and Improvement Company was formed to replace the Pittsburgh Company, with Carpenter as company owner and the Pennsylvania residents as shareholders.

At this point everything gets even more incredibly convoluted, with Carpenter turning over to his wife a claim of $79,896 against the Pine Bay Company and a relative of his wife’s bringing suit against the Pine Bay Company for $79,000, then changed hands to an Ernest F. Griffith for $4,750 until a previous owner, Henry L. Hall, of Pittsburgh, holding an old mortgage for $8,000 turned up and everything was forced into a foreclosure and sheriff’s sale for the amount of $4,750 plus the $80,000 claims against it.

In mid-1912, at the center of these land disputes, Reece Carpenter’s son, O.T. Carpenter, said that his father got a letter from B.C. Mayo asking if he would sell the land directly to Mayo and at what cost. The elder Carpenter never responded nor took any action to sell the land to Mayo, and eventually Mayo sent a man named M. Edgar Smith to approach him about it. Through negotiations between Carpenter and the Mayo/Smith team, an amount of $75,000 was agreed upon for the sale, but not before the contract was altered with a number of exceptions and changed several times. Three days after the contract was finalized, Reece Carpenter died, his wife left the house the day after the funeral with various letters and papers related to the land, and Mayo and the Tribune couldn’t get a bank to issue a policy as the original ownership by the Pennsylvanian shareholders hadn’t been part of the agreement, and everything was up in the air until Henry Hall surfaced with the old mortgage and a sheriff’s sale was held.

February 13, 1914 cover of the New Jersey Courier.

Finally, in February 1914, Addison Nickerson gained ownership to the property for the amount of $90,000.

The race to carve Beachwood out of the primitive scrub pine forest in time for a 1915 gala Decoration Day weekend opening was on.

Next:

Read about the early features of the Beachwood tract, A.D. Nickerson’s efforts to cut a resort community from the rough terrain, and the beginning of the Hearst-influenced investigations into Mayo, Nickerson and the Tribune by the federal government in the next edition of the Building Beachwood series.

Linked History: Toms River Community Theatre Built by Beachwood Man

Today we spotlight the work of Beachwood man Joseph Jerue, who was a builder, World War II veteran (along with both of his sons – one of whom, John, was lost during battle) and mayor of the borough.

Joseph Jerue in his official World War II service photo. This photo originally hung along those of other Beachwood servicemen in the Beachwood Circle Shop during the war.

In 1937, Mayor Jerue, then 41 years old, was named the builder of a prominent cultural site on Washington Street in downtown Toms River, the Community Theatre. To our benefit, its construction and featured amenities were detailed in an issue of Box Office Magazine in August of that year. Below you’ll find that article in full. We hope you enjoy this look back to an era and its architecture that one particularly prolific Beachwood resident helped make possible.

Reprinted material courtesy Ken Bacon and Box Office Magazine.

A MODERN THEATRE IN THE COLONIAL MANNER

Toms River Community Theatre as it appeared after its construction, in 1937. Today it has been renovated into shops and eateries.

A new modern theatre with a seating capacity of 1,000 persons was recently erected on Washington Street in Toms River, New Jersey. Definitely out of the ordinary in design and decor, the new edifice reflects the most contemporary expressions of architectural composition.

It is operated by the American Community Theatres, Inc.

Unlike most modern theatres, with their brilliantly lighted marquees and  electric signs over the entrance, this theatre with its simple Colonial front presents a decidedly novel appearance. Its architectural simplicity is pronounced.

The theatre is set back 30 feet from the sidewalk and the intervening portion of the property in front of the theatre is beautifully landscaped and circumvented by a flagged walk of unique design which serves as a delightful approach to and departure from the theatre.

The Washington Street facade is of red facebrick with white joints, in front of which is a beautifully designed Colonial portico done in wood and painted white.

The ticket booth is situated in the center of the entrance screen of doors. Lattice work above the entrance doors and the circular windows above the lattice work are constructed of wood and glass. All portico in wood and painted white, against the masterly executed red and white masonry background presents a simple but beautiful facade.

In the evening this facade is illuminated by flood lights which increase the beauty and interest of the architectural simplicity to a spectacular degree. The same simplicity of design is followed throughout the interior of the auditorium.

The sidewalls are of acoustical plaster integrally colored to a neutral shade. Subtly concealed vertical lighting troughs along the sidewalks are provided with varied colored lamps, lending a beautiful and variable color scheme to the interior.

The foyer, promenade, ladies’ cosmetic room and the men’s room are also of simple modern design, the beauty of which is greatly enhanced by exquisite lighting fixtures, carpets and furnishings.

The auditorium is provided with exceptionally wide chairs spaced to provide the maximum comfort for the patrons. The floors are carpeted with rich, heavy, exquisite carpet which helps to promote finer acoustical treatment for sound reception.

Particular attention was given to the gradient of the auditorium floor to insure every patron a perfect view of the screen, no matter where he is seated.

A new modern ventilating system was installed to assure the occupants of a healthful and comfortable atmosphere while they are being entertained. The projection room and sound equipment in this theatre are of the finest known to modern science.

The Toms River Community Theatre is a delightful example of the modern functionally furnished theatre. It was designed and erected under the supervision of Thomas W. Lamb, Inc., architects. The builder was Joseph E. Jerue, of Beachwood, N. J.

The Community Theatre's billing was found in this photograph taken in Disbrow's Market, on Beachwood Boulevard, one year after the above article was written - August 1938.

Local Founders Profile: Edward and Annie Robinson

From the pages of his own 1924 Beachwood Directory and Who’s Who, here is what William Mill Butler wrote about original residents Dr. and Mrs. Edward Percy Robinson. Click on all the embedded links for a broader understanding of their lives and background:

Circa 1924.

Robinson, Edward Percy, M.D., west corner Beachwood and Barnegat Blvds., Block D-40. Other address, 420 Nuber Avenue, Mt. Vernon, N.Y.

Born in the parish of St. James, Island of Barbadoes, of English parents, his father being  planter. Educated in private schools there and in the Coleridge School, an academy. Heard much about the United States and at the age of seventeen came to this country, and became a drug clerk in Philadelphia. He had studied the British Pharmacopoea before leaving home and now applied himself also to the study of American Pharmacopoea. In 1892 he was registered as a pharmacist in New York City, where he remained several years and became chief apothecary of the Presbyterian Hospital before he had attained his majority, being technically put on “probation” a year on this account. About 1903 he entered Bellevue Hospital Medical College, graduating in 1897 [ 2009 BHA Ed. note: it can be assumed that these dates are reversed; Robinson likely entered in 1897 and graduated in 1903].

Robinson home, circa 1924.

Engaged in general practice for several years and then entered the New York Post Graduate Medical School and Hospital in New York, and studied diseases of the nose and throat. For a time he was assistant to the chief of clinic in rhinology and laryngology at this institution, and he also served as assistant in the genito-urinary clinic at the Presbyterian Hospital Dispensary. His practice having reached a point requiring all his time, he gave up hospital and dispensary work.

Robinson home, Winter 2009.

For the past eighteen years or more Dr. Robinson has devoted his studies to the nature of the cell, and from these researches he wrote the epoch-making hypothesis on the cause of cancer and his reasons for the use of potassium nitrate in its treatment. His contributions to medical publications include: Use of Paraffin in Surgery, New York State Journal of Surgery, May, 1902; Artificial Cell Proliferation with Horse Serum in the Treatment of Burns, Annals of Surgery, March, 1917; A Plea for Potassium Nitrate in Cancer, Medical Record, May 4, 1918; Does Analogy Exist Between Animal and Vegetable Tumor? Medical Times, August, 1918; Does the Cure of Cancer Depend Upon Oxidation of the Tissues? Medical Record, July 5, 1919; The Influence of Potassium Nitrate in Nephritis, Medical Council, May, 1919; Is the Endamoeba Buccalis the Real Cause of Pyorrhea? Dental Cosmos, October, 1919; Electrochemism in the Etiology and Therapeusis of Cancer, Medical Record, July 24, 1920. Other important contributions since.

Dr. Robinson was married to Miss Annie Reinacher in New York, 26 years ago. They have one son, Beverly Kerr Robinson, who served in the infantry overseas during the war, as a runner, carrying messages in the thickest of battles, without being harmed. Dr. Robinson is a member of the College of Pharmacy in New York. Is a charter member of the Polyhue Yacht Club, at present serving his second term as Commodore. Also a member of the Property Owners’ Assn. His son is also a charter member of the Polyhue Yacht Club.

Original Polyhue Yacht Clubhouse.

Case Study: Rite Aid Closings Sweeping Nation

Today we’re going to look at two news stories on the recent wave of Rite Aid closings currently rippling through the nation, and one news analysis on the overall state of the retail pharmacy chain. Many of the sites being closed are less than a few years old, and stand at what used to be downtown centers that once held locally important heritage structures.

As our own borough town center faces the continued threat of demolition for the self-interest of this corporation, we should ask ourselves as a community if we’re willing to trade our unique and irreplaceable past for a structure predesigned and built in repetition across America, by an irresponsible non-local company that is currently issuing waves of layoffs and closings that very directly impact the lives of local residents who depend on it.

It certainly appears that Rite Aid, which overextended itself by greedily grabbing up and demolishing culturally and historically significant sites across the nation during economic boom years, is turning into its own ugly moniker, Blight Aid, as many of these sites now go dark, leaving a wasteful legacy behind in local communities left holding undesirable and oversized chunks of abandoned commercial real estate where links to their past once stood.

Small Scale New Urbanism – The Future of Beachwood?

In today’s entry we’re going to begin to examine the concept of New Urbanism and how it can relate to the future of our borough. This will be the first part in a series studying how, with Beachwood nearly 100 percent built out to its borders, our borough officials and property owners can begin focusing their energy to meet the needs and goals of the coming years.

A.D. Nickerson home, today.

What is New Urbanism?

“New Urbanism is an urban design movement that arose in the United States in the early 1980s. Its goal is to reform many aspects of real estate development and urban planning, from urban retrofits to suburban infill. New urbanist neighborhoods are designed to contain a diverse range of housing and jobs, and to be walkable.

New Urbanism can include (neo)traditional neighborhood design, transit-oriented development, and New Pedestrianism. New Urbanism is the re-invention of the old urbanism, commonly seen before the advent of the automobile age, while New Pedestrianism is a further elaboration of less common, pedestrian-oriented, urban design experiments that date to the early 20th century.”*

As New Urbanists can trace the history of this contemporary movement back to early 20th Century development, so can we in our own borough.

Beachwood 1930.

Beachwood, begun in 1914 as a newspaper subscription promotion, was cut from a tract originally part of Berkeley Township and focused almost entirely on our waterfront, criss-crossing train lines and their station point, with a downtown constructed connecting the two. Starting out as a resort community for the upper working class of New York City, its early homes consisted largely of summer bungalows and evolving to more year-round cape-style homes through World War II. Original residents relied mainly on the trains to take them to and from their regular neighborhoods in the New York City area, and the waterfront for recreation and the nautical access of the bustling county seat, Toms River. Cars, while prevalent in some of the more well off family homes, were largely absent or left behind at home in the bedroom communities of northern New Jersey, New York State and Long Island.

Beachwood’s population in those early years hovered well under one thousand, and the southern ‘heights’ portion of the borough was an undeveloped pine forest. Boy Scout troops, including Beachwood’s own Pack 14 (now 114), would camp out where today there are many modern homes and paved streets.

Our center of town handled much of early pedestrian residents’ needs: an A&P, American Store and Disbrow’s Market for groceries; an independent butcher shop and a butcher counter in Disbrow’s for meats; Greene’s Economy Store for hardware, gifts and sundries; the Beachwood Library for borrowing reading material; and the Beachwood Circle Shop, for socializing, dancing and fast dining that catered to residents not just of Beachwood but also the greater Toms River and Berkeley Township area.

All of this changed with the advent of World War II and the coming of both the baby boom and automobile age. The latter cut a physical presence in the borough, as the Garden State Parkway, built in the early 1950s, sliced off the tail end of Beachwood from the rest. The combination of Americans living high on one income through the post-war economic boom with the advent of a clean, fast highway linking northern New Jersey to south drove families by the thousands down to Ocean County and Beachwood.

The borough population and the number of homes built near-doubled every decade from 1940 to 1980. This booming growth quickly usurped the previous small sleepy shore town atmosphere and replaced it with a thriving community sprawling out from the old town center before encroaching the parkway boundary itself, once thought a feat unimaginable. With Americans’ new thirst for the convenience of the automobile over what they perceived to be the slow, turgid crawl of a train, passenger service through the borough quickly ended and residents had no other choice but to fill their streets, side yards, front yards and newly built detached garages with cars of their own. While one car was at first considered the norm, multiple cars soon appeared on the curbs and drives around the borough as children became teenagers and multiple incomes became necessary, and garages and carports developed into a regular sight incorporated in the postwar ranch-style home designs.

As the borough grew, so did residents’ accessibility to resources beyond its borders. Grocery stores, general stores, butchers and consumer-friendly luxury goods retail establishments began filling strip malls, such as the Beachwood Plaza, built in 1959 (it resides in Berkeley Township; period newspapers reported owner Jimmy Johnson named it after our borough to spite Berkeley officials whom he said were giving him headaches over his various projects).

Beachwood 2002.

The past thirty years only increased the desirability of our area, a result of both buildable open space having become near non-existent in communities to the north, and the growing faction of amenity-driven building and location seekers, peaking with the advent of the “McMansion” over the past dozen or so years. Developers snapped up many of the remaining lots in the borough and filled them with large-style homes maxing out almost to the property line on most sides, pushing trees and green space out while adding more cars to the tinier front and side setbacks and streets. Similarly, our town center transformed from the actual center of residents’ activity to that of a periphery entity often viewed from the safety of a car with curiosity or disdain at its fraying, old-style buildings and general lack of sprawling parking. Beachwood residents no longer had the train-downtown-waterfront connection their predecessors enjoyed; the very concept which united the borough and fostered its community spirit blurred into the background. As if symbolizing the final pullout from our downtown area after years of diminishing pedestrian traffic, the original borough hall/firehouse, located right at the heart of town, was demolished and its property sold for the construction of a new, larger borough hall at the southernmost – and almost exclusively automobile accessible – parkway end of town, in the mid to late 1990s.

“Although conventional suburban development has been popular, it carries a significant price. Lacking a town center or pedestrian scale, conventional suburban development spreads out to consume large areas of countryside even as population grows relatively slowly. Automobile use per capita has soared, because a motor vehicle is required for the great majority of household and commuter trips.

Those who cannot drive are significantly restricted in their mobility. The working poor living in suburbia spend a large portion of their incomes on cars. Meanwhile, the American landscape where most people live and work is dominated by strip malls, auto-oriented civic and commercial buildings, and subdivisions without much individuality or character.”**

Utilizing the New Urbanism approach by latching onto the approaching county rail trail connection as a downtown and waterfront stimulus project, the Borough of Beachwood could become both a thriving auto-accessed suburb and pedestrian-friendly economic attraction, restoring its founders’ downtown structures, raising borough revenue through increased sales in beach access badges and general heightened property value and prosperity via regular downtown solicitation, enticing the proliferation of health-conscious activities among residents, and overall improving life in the borough through sustainable development:

“There are some common elements of new urbanist design. New urbanist neighborhoods are walkable, and are designed to contain a diverse range of housing and jobs. New urbanists support regional planning for open space, appropriate architecture and planning, and the balanced development of jobs and housing. They believe these strategies are the best way to reduce the time people spend in traffic, to increase the supply of affordable housing, and to rein in urban sprawl. Many other issues, such as historic preservation, safe streets, green building, and the renovation of brownfield land are also covered in the Charter of the New Urbanism, the movement’s seminal document. Because new urbanist designs include many of the features (like mixed use and emphasis on walkability) which characterized urban areas in the pre-automobile age, the movement is sometimes known as Traditional neighborhood design.”**

* = Taken from Wikipedia entry on New Urbanism

** – Courtesy the New Urban Trust

Protecting the Heart of the Borough

In today’s post we’re going to take a look at an article written for Syracuse Then and Now, in 2000. Its content displays the ironic idea behind the ‘viral’ pharmacy chain trend that has been targeting the heart of communities across America. Its quoted comments from local politicians stating that such profit-driven proposals cannot be stopped are, however, incorrect.

Local officials and board members can easily halt such plans, particularly in Beachwood, by making their judgement based on pre-existing land development rules that have been on the books to protect our borough and its residents from such abusive site proposals for decades. These regulations have served our borough well, protecting our waterfront, our parks and our general business and residential districts.

It now appears they will have the opportunity to protect the very heart of our borough as well – our downtown.

The Drugstore Invasion

Chain pharmacies are returning to Downtown America. They’re also destroying it.

Grants Give Heritage Buildings Renewed Life

Today we’re going to take a look at a recent article published in The Hub, a Monmouth County newspaper, that takes a look at how our neighbors to the north are providing their communities with sustainable development by restoring and preserving locally unique heritage and culture sites.

While Ocean County does not do direct historic preservation grants, according to county heritage and culture commissioner Timothy Hart, there are grants available for qualifying historic projects. Additionally, owners of sites with potential local or state historic importance may seek to add their structures to the State of New Jersey Historic Preservation Office’s statewide registry for qualification of improvement and restoration loans, grants and other financial benefits.

With our downtown corridor currently threatened by a massive demolition and commercial redevelopment project at the hands of the Rite Aid Corporation, it is important borough residents continue to question that proposal’s irreversible impact on our community’s culture and heritage and work to create alternate plans and programs to benefit property owners within that project’s parameters and across the borough.

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Breathing New Life into Vintage Buildings

County preservation grants give local restorations a boost

Erin O. Stattel
Staff Writer
The News Transcript
Greater Media Newspapers

About two-dozen historic preservation projects, including the restoration of the Van- Mater Barn in Holmdel and the Little Red Schoolhouse in Middletown, will be able to move forward as a result of grants from the Monmouth County Historical Commission.

Church of the Presidents in Long Branch

The grants, totaling $42,500, were awarded to applicants based on the projects submitted.

According to the county, each grantee is required to submit interim and final reports of the project’s progress accompanied by photographs that detail the progress.

Most of the projects are “bricks and mortar” projects that address structural projects and costly maintenance to buildings that are generally more than 50 years old.

“We have a good mix of grantees, including a number with repeated grants as well as first-time applicants,” said Randall Gabrielan, executive director of the Monmouth County Historical Commission.

According to Holmdel Township’s Denise Fritz, work is being done to the structural elements of the VanMater Barn, located at the Cross Farm off Old Mill Road.

St. George’s-by-the-River Episcopal Church in Rumson

“The barn has been in numerous phases, and now the structural support in the lower portion is being addressed with this grant money,” Fritz explained.

The barn is in working condition and is used by Brookrest Sod Farm of Marlboro for storage and to house various farming supplies, Fritz said.

The Cross Farm is owned by Holmdel Township and was transferred to the town in 1979 by the Cross Family. Before the township owned the farm, Fritz said, Henry Cross purchased the property from Joseph Van- Mater in 1913. The change of title begins with VanMater in 1836.

In neighboring Middletown, Marlpit Hall, located on King’s Highway and owned by the Monmouth County Historical Association, received a grant for interior painting.

“Marlpit Hall was built circa 1756 by the Taylor family and it was the first house in our collection, acquired in 1936 from Mrs. J. Emory Haskell,” said Lee Ellen Griffith, director of the Monmouth County Historical Association. “The Taylor family were crown royalists and found themselves with a reversal of fortune during the RevolutionaryWar and in conflict with some of their neighbors.”

Christ Church in Shrewsbury

According to Griffith, the Taylor family retained ownership of the property despite the tough times.

“Later generations of the Taylor family made their fortune in the China trade in New York City and decided to come back to the grandfather’s farm,” Griffith explained. “They then built a large Victorian mansion next door, which we also own, called the Taylor- Butler House.”

Griffith said the association came into ownership of the Taylor-Butler home in 1999.

“We pick a project each year for the Monmouth County preservation grants,” Griffith said. “This year, it was Marlpit Hall’s turn.”

Marlpit Hall is furnished with both furniture the original Taylor family would have used and furniture that Mrs. J. Emory Haskell would have furnished a home with.

According to Griffith, Haskell was an avid collector of Americana-style objects.

Marlpit Hall in Middletown

Marlpit Hall, along with other Monmouth County Historical Association structures, is open May through September on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays from 1 to 4 p.m. Guided tours are available and admission is free, but donations are always gratefully accepted, Griffith said.

In Long Branch, the Church of the Presidents received a face-lift, courtesy of the grant money, with the Long Branch Historical Museum Association restoring the front masonry of the south-facing portico porch.

“This building is the only remaining site that served that many presidents here in Long Branch,” said Joan Schnorbus, a member of the Long Branch Historical Museum Association board of trustees. “This grant allows us to do work to the masonry on the front of the building.”

According to Schnorbus, the association also received funding from the N.J. Historical Trust that will allow for restoration of the rest of the building’s masonry.

“Basically, with these two grants, we can

Rite Aid = Blight Aid? Site Abandonment Photo Essay

Blight Aid: Coming soon to the heart of our borough?

Today we’ll be looking at a myriad of sites across the United States which had been recently built for Rite Aid and their design requirements but subsequently abandoned for various reasons, not least of which is ‘underperformance’.