Spend time at the Jersey Shore and you can see there is no other place like it. Lyndhurst author Kevin Woyce sees it, photographs it and takes readers on a trip through history to explain why and how the shore became the unique place it continues to be in his book "Jersey Shore Facts & Photos."
"No matter how many times you visit these places, you’ll find something you never saw before," he said.
From a giant elephant in the sand dunes to a smiling clown face on the side of a building, the Jersey shore has no shortage of wacky landmarks.
In the early 1880s, land developer James Lafferty built a 60-foot-tall elephant with 22-foot-long tusks just south of Atlantic City to attract tourists. The elephant, later nicknamed "Lucy," doubled as a real estate office. The idea was a large elephant would peak people’s curiosity and draw them to the office to entice them to buy vacant land in and around the sand dunes.
During that time period, Atlantic City was just getting started and Lafferty was never able to turn a profit on the land. Lucy, located in Margate, was one of three elephant-shaped real estate offices. Another, built near Cape May, was knocked down in 1900 and yet another, on Coney Island in New York, burned down in 1896.
Lucy worked as a tourist attraction, but did not draw investors to the area. At various times, the elephant doubled as a tavern and was rented out as a summer cottage. By the 1960s, Lucy was pretty much in ruins, but was rebuilt in the 1970s two blocks away from the original building.
"Tilly," the smiling face that adorned the side of a building in Asbury Park for half of a century, was named after George Tilyou, owner and creator of Steeplechase Park on Coney Island. Tilyou also owned an amusement park in Asbury Park bearing Tilly’s face. The building burnt down in the 1940s. The owner of Palace Amusements, previously Tilyou’s competitor, painted the same face on the side of his building in the 1950s to "remind people of the old days," according to Woyce.
The building was knocked down in 2004, but the face has become a symbol for the town. Many of the photographs in "Jersey Shore Facts & Photos" were taken in Asbury Park, including one of an old Howard Johnson and two of the Convention Center, both located on the boardwalk.
New Jersey’s history stretches much further back than its heyday during the last century. As far back as the 1690s, famous pirates passed through the area, including Captain Kidd on his way up to Boston. Local historians have debated whether or not the pirates landed or even buried treasure on the Jersey Shore.
During the American Revolutionary War and the War of 1812, pirates hid on the islands and inlets of the Jersey Shore and looted British ships.
Woyce grew up in East Rutherford, but like many South Bergen residents, visited the shore in the summer. He visited his grandfather in Mystic Islands. He also visited Wildwood Crest and Cape May and made day trips to Asbury Park and Point Pleasant.
His interest in photography began with lighthouses. In his first published book, "20 Lighthouses: Lake Erie & Ontario," Woyce photographs lighthouses along the lakes from Pennsylvania, Ohio and New York.
After trips to points northwest, Woyce realized he could find lighthouses closer to his Lyndhurst home by visiting the Jersey Shore, which spurred a renewed interest in the area. "They were built at a time that there really wasn’t much of anything down there," he said. "It kinda brings you back into another time before the development, before there was anyone else there."
The lighthouses were built with an express purpose, keeping boats from running aground. Unlike the ones in the Great Lakes, New Jersey lighthouses were built tall enough to be seen from 20 to 25 miles out at sea. "It would warn you where the coast was," he said.
Each lighthouse would flash a certain number of times per minute and the government released a list decoding the signals given off by each lighthouse. Some of these still do this today, while many people rely on GPS systems and radio beacons.
The final part of the book contains photos and explanations of Jersey Shore architecture throughout the years. Of particular interest to Woyce were the "doo-wop" motels. Built in the Wildwoods in the 1950s, these structures were done in an architectural style unseen in other parts of the country. Woyce came in contact with a preservation league in the area concerned with keeping the style and feel of the town unique.
