My Horse is better than yours

The Sea Girt Company sold its first lots. Charles Noble contacted for a fancy sales brochure.

Harold Crowley and Horace Rounds were added to the directors of the company. Charles Noble seemed to be getting things rolling. Several train loads of sewer pipe were dropped off at Sea Girt Station. It appeared the improvements long promised, but never built out were coming to fruition.

Brochure cover The entire brochure is posted here (will open a new window in an unaffiliated page) https://seagirtnews.com/offer-book/album/slides/Sea_Girt_Book1%20web.html

For the third time, the streets were renamed. This time they would stick. It was common practice at the time to name streets in resort towns after familiar cities. Point Pleasant, Lavalette, Egg Harbor all copied many of the easy-to-remember street names of Atlantic City and Cape May. The use of “Boulevard” at the time gave a grander feeling to the names. Avenues and streets were narrower than classic boulevards, and the promoters wanted to give the impression that the setbacks of the homes would allow the sea breeze to travel up the long boulevards to the lots they hoped to sell.

Terrace Ave = The Terrace
Bellevue Ave = Beacon Blvd
Clinton Ave = Chicago Blvd
Sherwood Ave = Brooklyn Blvd
Fairmont Ave = New York Blvd
Olden Ave = Baltimore Blvd
Park = Philadelphia Blvd
Newell= Boston Blvd
Stockton = Crescent Parkway-
Central = Washington Blvd
Hamilton = Trenton Blvd
Mott = Stockton Blvd
Salem = Neptune Blvd
Franklin =Sea Side
Carriage Way = Carriage Way

In the Spring of 1908, the resort promoters at Sea Girt cleared the land between the train tracks and the Manasquan Pike (Rt.71). They solicited members of both communities to join the new Spring Lake and Sea Girt Country Club. The area west of the tracks between Baltimore Blvd and Brooklyn Blvd was laid out with a regulation polo field surrounded by a track. It quickly grew to 200 members, and a clubhouse was constructed. They were careful not to make the land a park. The map at the county still showed future building lots.

Early events were horse shows, racing, and polo matches. A steeplechase was placed in the inside of the track, and 3,000 attended opening weekend. The first horse to win a race was aptly named “Fancy".

The following weekend was paired with the two-day Spring Lake Carnival which included a series of swimming races, diving, water polo, horse racing, and a horse show. A band with fireworks at night closed out the celebration. Robert Stockton’s horse Shoen won the Monmouth Stakes, Princeton swimmers and divers owned the pool events, and the membership of the club owned many of the horses that won ribbons and loving cups.

The membership photo at opening (Pach Brothers photos courtesy of RUCOR Rutgers University Community Repository)

The Sea Girt water tower is still in the same location. Note that many motor cars were driven to the Country Club.

Prominent as an officer of the club was Ferdinand W. Roebling, second of the four sons of John Roebling who invented twisted wire rope and designed the Brooklyn Bridge. The Roeblings summered at their Spring Lake home on Jersey Avenue starting in the 1890s.

Women rarely competed at polo. Louise Hitchcock at the Meadowbrook Country Club on Long Island introduced women to the sport in 1901. Before, many American women rode side saddle. Hitchcock was an excellent teacher and her son went on to be the best player in the world.

In 1908, F.W. Roebling started lessons for women at Sea Girt. The team debut was in 1909. His niece, Charles’ daughter Emily Margaretta, named after her aunt, was an excellent rider and athlete. She showed off her skills in front of her fiancé Richard McCall Cadwallader, a banker from a wealthy Philadelphia family.

Given the interest in fine horses, the Guard Camp came under renewed scrutiny. Many of the animals had been driven hard to get to Sea Girt. Some were overworked and poorly provisioned.

Rachel Lynch, whose husband Jasper was a wealthy real estate man in Lakewood, and Spring Lake was Secretary of the State Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and President of the Ocean County Chapter. She reported a Virginia regiment for inhumane treatment of their horses.

Early 1900s postcard of Lynch’s castle in Lakewood. He owned many rental cottages in the winter resort.

Governor Franklin Fort was thrown from a horse, when it was spooked by a marching band. He was no Teddy Roosevelt. Then he was accused of spending $3,000 of State money on his personal entertainment at the camp.