Downtown Freehold! It kind of looks like it's stuck in the 1960's or 70's, to me.
What YOU'LL be stuck in, if you visit downtown Freehold, is TRAFFIC.
P.S. My internet connection is more of a fizz today... it's in for 30 seconds, out for 3 minutes, in for 25 seconds, out for 4 minutes, etc. etc. etc. It may be worse tomorrow. If I miss a day--sorry!
I remember when this little balcony didn't used to be fenced off.
It's part of the Asbury Park Casino/ Boiler House/ Carousel complex, on the Ocean Grove side.
I don't know what that thing it, but it's a big and easily identifiable building on Atlantic Highlands.
I went to Coney Island in March. When I walked to the end of the pier, I squinted my eyes and said, "Hey!!! That's the Highlands!!!"
"How can you tell?" asked the friend I was with.
"See how the land is all flat there except for that building sticking up in the middle?"
"So you can identify New Jersey by that giant blemish, boil, blight on the landscape?"
"Yeah! Isn't that awesome?!"
Also seen in photos taken from Coney Island: the Twin Lights (above)...
...and Sandy Hook lighthouse (above)!
For as often as I've seen New York City from Sandy Hook, it was really cool to do it in reverse.
(The originals of these photos were taken at absolute full 10x zoom, full resolution. And I still had to crop those last two photos to ~420 pixels wide.)
Detail of the copper Medusa heads* that surround the carousel house in Asbury Park.
Asbury Park notes:
First off, Madame Marie died last Friday, June 27, just nine days after I featured her. She was 93.
Secondly, someone threw... a raw hamburger? a large chunk of watermelon? at my car--about an inch below the driver's side window--while I was driving through Asbury Park last Wednesday. Having heard the ear-shattering THUNK with which it hit, I'm relieved that there doesn't seem to be any permanent body damage. Remember--Asbury Park is looking up, but it ain't there yet.
*Actually, as far as I can tell, nobody's entirely sure what these faces really represent. We all kind of assume they're Medusae, but we're not certain what Warren Whitney was thinking when he decided to add these faces to his design.
Some of you non-Jersey-Shore-ites might be wondering why I'm featuring Asbury Park this week.
Asbury Park, aside from being one of two official "cities" in Monmouth County (the other being Long Branch), has one of the most interesting histories in the area (and, according to the official website, has been deemed the sixth-best place in the state for music).
In 1871, James A. Bradley (who developed several of the shore towns; Bradley Beach [a town slightly south] is named after him) established Asbury Park, and by 1894, the resort was officially a bustling city. Development grew; Art Deco and Beaux Arts architecture proliferated; over 600,000 people each year came by train from New York City and Philadelphia to enjoy the pleasures of Asbury. [1]
But progress wasn't kind to the city. After World War II, the surrounding farms were developed into suburbia, so those who could afford it moved into newer houses with spacious yards. The Garden State Parkway, built from 1946-1957, allowed vacationers to plan trips that didn't involve taking trains to the shore. Ten miles away in Eatontown, Monmouth Mall--established in 1958 and continually expanded through 1975, 1986, and 1993--was more convenient and attractive to shoppers than the boutiques of downtown Asbury Park. Thirty miles away in Jackson Township, Six Flags Great Adventure opened in 1972, making vacationers think twice about spending their summers on "a mile-long stretch of aging boardwalk amusements."[2]
Asbury Park was already on the down-and-down when the July 4 weekend race riots in 1970 destroyed several aging buildings and killed 46 people. (My mother actually worked in Asbury Park at this time; she came back from her pleasant little July 4th weekend, heard about what had happened in Asbury while she was off skiing, and got a call from one of her clients warning everyone in the storefront operation to get out, there's a mob coming your way!) It was official: there was no longer any reason for tourists to spend their summers in this seaside town.
Except, of course, the music scene, but I won't get into that here.
The carousel house and Palace Amusements managed to stay afloat until 1988 (in fact, the carousel horses were refurbished at great cost in 1986, but according to Palace Amusements Online:
During the summer of 1987, a 50-mile slick of discarded medical and hospital trash and household garbage ruined parts of the Jersey shore, and scared visitors away from nearly all the rest. Bill Foster, the Palace manager, was quoted as blaming the disaster for a 55 percent drop in Palace business; others, including Sam Vaccaro, dispute that figure but say the impact was very bad. A year later, mistakes made during the cleaning of Asbury Park's sewage line flushed high levels of fecal bacteria into the ocean, closing beaches for 19 days. The State of New Jersey fined Asbury Park more than $1 million for the mistake. The number of day visitors to Asbury Park dropped like a rock. [3]
As far as I'm aware, everyone who could leave did. Growing up, we heard about the shootings, the dangers, the "don't go to Asbury if you don't have to." Last summer (2007), when I went to take some nighttime photos of the Asbury Park Casino, an Ocean Grove cop-on-a-Segway stopped for a few moments to warn me to BE CAREFUL! And there was an article on the front page of the Asbury Park Press today (June 18, 2008) describing "96 arrested in Asbury Park."
In 2002, the redevelopment began. The dilapidated buildings are either being preserved or demolished; either way, the city is cleaning up and attracting new people, including a substantial LGBT community. [2] Cookman Avenue, pictured above, is one of the hippest areas of Asbury. According to a friend, "There's a rainbow flag in like every window. It's not as bad as we were told growing up."
Asbury Park's got a rich history: some bright, some dark, all more interesting than, say, Farmingdale. And it's kind of exciting to share a zip code with the best-known municipality in Monmouth County.
Sources:
[1] Asbury Park, New Jersey- Official Website, History, accessed June 17 2008.
[2] Wikipedia, Asbury Park, New Jersey, accessed June 17 2008.
[3] Palace Amusements Online, 1986-1988, accessed June 17 2008.
Interior of Asbury Park Casino--what's left of it, anyway. And, just to orient you, if you click that "Asbury Park Casino" link and pretend you're standing there, this is what you'd see if you looked through a hole in the wall to your left.
(Click the photo for a larger size! This is two photos hand-stitched together with no fancy software.)
What is this?
Painted on Asbury Park's Wonder Bar, this is a reproduction of the original 'Tillie' faces found on the walls of Palace Amusements.
"Tillie?" You go around naming murals on walls?
George C. Tilyou, better known as the owner of Coney Island's Steeplechase Park (and the father of the contemporary amusement park), had a marketing strategy for his Coney Island parks: "his trademark image of a grinning face (replete with twice the usual number of teeth) appeared on the entrance, tickets, and all printed material."[1]
Here's a photo of the George C. Tilyou's Coney Island face, photographed in March 2008:
In an "homage" to Tilyou's original funny-face icon, Worth Thomas designed a similar (though not identical, under threat of copyright infringement) fifteen-foot tall face in the mid-1950s, painted twice--for two walls of Palace Amusements.[2] Why a giant grinning face, of all things to pay homage to? According to the Palace Museum Online, the face "stylistically continued a tradition begun in 1897 when Coney Island amusements impresario George Cornelius Tilyou introduced a fun face as the logo of Steeplechase Park in Coney Island. Tilyou so successfully integrated the image throughout his park that most other amusement entrepreneurs followed with designs of their own."[3] (I've never heard of other parks using the face, though.)
So, to answer the original question: Tilyou--> Tillie. That's all.
Okay, so why reproduce a random mural? It's just a face.
Tillie is/was one of the most recognizable icons of the Jersey Shore. Don't ask me why.
When there were plans to demolish the Palace Amusements building, a whole SWARM of people stood up and fought it for years. They called themselves 'Save Tillie' and managed to have the building listed on the New Jersey and National Registers of Historic Places. But, well, they didn't own the property; eventually economics won out, and the building was demolished in 2004... but NOT before Save Tillie managed to salvage the murals. (Here's a picture.)[4]
So... where's Tillie now?
In storage somewhere, waiting for an appropriate opportunity for display to arise.[5]
Sources:
[1] Ford, Robert C., and Ady Milman, George C. Tilyou--Developer of the Contemporary Amusement Park, August 1 2000; accessed June 15 2008.
[2] Mister Snitch, A Tale of Two Tillies, August 2 2005; accessed June 15 2008.
[3] Palace Online Museum, 1955-1956, 2005; accessed June 15 2008.
[4] Palace Online Museum, Save Tillie, 2005; accessed June 15 2008.
[5] Crane, Bob, Asbury Park redevelopers disregarding historic artifacts, May 11 2008; accessed June 15 2008.
(If that link doesn't work, try Backstreets.com)
(This bibliography is absolutely improper, but hey, at least I'm citing my sources.)
I have several points to make today. Enter the numbered list:
1. On the left (below) is an exterior shot taken at the same time as the photo featured above. Compare to the photo I took of this building back in January:
This is super-exciting, because--you'll note--this closed-to-the-public-for-20-years carousel IS OPEN. No fences, no doors, no broken glass, no debris, and lights that work! Plus you can see the grooves in the floor where the carousel used to be, which is just awesome.
When I originally posted this in January, I was encouraged to break and enter to obtain photographs. But look--if you're patient, you can do these sorts of things LEGALLY. Yippee.
2. For a full history of the carousel building, visit my original post on the matter. For the abbreviated version-- the Asbury Park carousel building (along with the Casino) was designed by Warren Whitney (one of the guys who designed Grand Central Station); the carousel was installed in 1923; it closed sometime in the late '80s (I think) for economic reasons, and the carousel itself can currently be found in Family Kingdom in North Carolina.
3. There was supposed to be a farmer's market in this building today. There wasn't. There were four vendors (1-flowers, 2-veggies, 3-coffee, 4-pasta) in the Casino next door. I got up early this morning to enjoy the pleasures of this well-publicized "farmer's market in the carousel building," and I was most disappointed. And from the snippets of about 7 other conversations that I caught, I was NOT ALONE. Of course, this means that the next time Asbury Park actually wants to have a farmer's market in the carousel building, we shoppers will all be damned if we bother to show up again.
4. I may make this into an Asbury Park feature week--I have lots of photos and I'm slightly obsessed with it at the moment. Be prepared!
Presbyterian Church on the Hill--not to be confused with Tower Hill Presbyterian, which is about a half-hour's drive away.
Side note--after my dad and I fiddled with the internet for a few hours this morning (and finally convinced it to not poop out every couple minutes), I went to SpeedTest.net to check the connection. Turns out, my DSL line is running faster than--get this--8% of other American connections and 16% of connections worldwide. Man, no wonder I have such difficulty loading everyone else's photoblogs!
This photo was 100% luck.
I tried to replicate this shot under the next few overpasses (sitting in the passenger seat, going 65mph) and got nothing. Overexposed blurs, underexposed blurs, blurs that couldn't figure out where to focus, blurs with glare from the windshield behind which I was sitting, etc. etc. etc.
Someone else in my position might get frustrated that her lucky shots often have as much merit as the ones with careful attention to exposure and composition, but me? I'm a casual snapshot photographer anyway, so it doesn't bother me one bit.
....okay, I'm a little annoyed.
Ever looked closely at a wall? It's kind of interesting.
(This particular wall belongs to our local Tar-JHEY, which is how many of us pronounce Target. Maybe not many of us. But some of us get a kick out of imagining it as a classy French store.)
A sign above this door reads,
"NOTICE
is hereby given of an application
for DEMOLITION of this BUILDING.
Final action is to be taken by the
Neptune Township Historic
Preservation Commission on
July 27, 2004. Persons interested
in the acquisition and preservation
of this building should contact
Rose Havey at 732.555.1234 x.247"
(That's not really the phone number.)
Former location of the 700 Building at Monmouth University. I don't know what they're building here now.
(...Or maybe it was the 600 Building...? I don't really have a head for remembering numbers.)
Apparently, this is business on Ocean Blvd. in Long Branch is technically known as "Ocean D-Lites." But they do sell Tasti D-Lite, which, if you're not familiar with it (since it's only sold in a few states: New York [most of its stores are concentrated in NYC], New Jersey, Connecticut, Florida, and Texas), is a soft-serve "guilt-free" ice cream-esque dessert.
I actually just tried the stuff for the first time last weekend. Despite the multitude of flavors, after a few bites, you stop tasting anything at all and only feel the cold softness on your tongue. It's not bad, but it's not real ice cream.
Remember when I showed you Asbury Park's Convention Hall? Well, this is Paramount Theatre, the bit that faces away from the Atlantic Ocean.
Everything I told you in the first post still holds true, but I'll repeat some of it:
1. While most people refer to the entire structure as the "Convention Hall," the building is ACTUALLY a union of both the Paramount Theatre (west of the boardwalk) and the Asbury Park Convention Hall (east of the boardwalk). In the words of the official website, it's "a multi-purpose venue of two separate buildings joined by a Grand Arcade."
2. It was designed in 1923 by Warren and Wetmore, the same guys who designed Grand Central Terminal in New York City as well as the Asbury Park Casino and Casino Carousel House. It is a registered historic building (according to Wikipedia).
Construction in Ocean Grove. I think probably because all the houses are made of wood (which--admit it--is not the most durable substance on earth), places need to be rebuilt after one is torn down/burned down.
The above photo is one I took in 2002. It's actually right across the street from the building in the color photo.
The Asbury Park Convention Hall juts on the beach. Unlike the Casino, this beach-jutting has not yet caused it to fall into the ocean. (Side note: if you click that casino link, just so you know, everything to the right of the large casino pillar has been demolished now.)
While most people refer to the entire structure as the "Convention Hall," the building is ACTUALLY a union of both the Paramount Theatre (west of the boardwalk) and the Asbury Park Convention Hall (east of the boardwalk). In the words of the official website, it's "a multi-purpose venue of two separate buildings joined by a Grand Arcade."
(presumably, the red-and-white striped bit, which was not always red-and-white striped, is the "Grand Arcade" that connects the two buildings.)
It was designed in 1923 by Warren and Wetmore, the same guys who designed Grand Central Terminal in New York City as well as the Asbury Park Casino and Casino Carousel House.* It is a registered historic building (according to Wikipedia).
Maybe someday later, if you're lucky, I'll show you the west Paramount Theatre side. :)
*Some pictures may not show up today. Zooomr, one of my photo-hosting sites, is having issues (as usual).
