The Beach House Loses its Charm

Lighthouse Keeper since the retirement of Abraham Wolf in 1903, second Keeper Abram Yates died while on duty at the lighthouse. Yates had been ill for months. While he was ill his wife Harriett kept the light burning. while also looking after the four children. After he died while on duty, she kept the light and the log, even when he was being waked in the Lighthouse. There was an effort to allow Harriett to remain on the job. Despite appeals from Congressman Benjamin Howell, there was no provision in the Lighthouse Service for a female, and the job needed to go to a civil servant already in the Lighthouse Service. Harriett kept the job from May to June before being replaced by John L. Hawkey.

The battle against the spread of alcohol was centered at Sea Girt.

Frank F. Clayton was the former owner of the Pabst Loop Hotel on Surf Avenue in Coney Island. The Pabst, with its roller rink, ballroom and veranda overlooking the sea was in an ideal location at the beach terminus of two trolleys from Brooklyn.

Clayton, an entertainer and hotel manager secured the sponsorship of the great Milwaukee brewery in 1900, and Clayton’s hotel next to the amusements thrived until it burned to the ground in 1908, pushing Clayton into bankruptcy.

The women of Manasquan did not want this in their neighborhood

Fortunately for Clayton, the Whites passed away in 1905 & 1906. Charles D.S. White and Martha Elizabeth Curtis were married in 1854 and had lived on their charming farm on the southern side of Wreck Pond in Wall Township and there raised nine children. Cooking for eleven was like running a restaurant, and when Charles fell ill, Mrs. White opened a well-regarded roadhouse on their property called the Wreck Pond Inn on the highway between Manasquan and Long Branch (now RT71).

Their daughter Airenda had married Thomas Devlin and they kept another rooming house, the Atlantic Cottage, until they built the Parker House near the beach. When Mrs. White died, the property was auctioned off in 1910 and fell into the hands of Clayton.

Clayton used the Wreck Pond Inn name for two seasons. He spent thousands to landscape the property to make it into a picnic ground. When he first applied for a liquor license he was denied, and the judge told him to operate for a few seasons without trouble. The arguments against it came from the women of Manasquan.

The Manasquan Women’s Christian Temperance Union, emboldened by their squashing Clayton’s efforts tried publicly shaming two of the superintendents of the Methodist Sunday school for signing the application for a liquor license for the Beach House in Sea Girt. The licence was for the new managers Wilfed Scull, and Henry Parker, who felt they needed to sell alcohol to attract patrons.

The Beach house had aged and lost a bit of its prominence. When the Monmouth House re-opened in 1904 it had electric lights (not gas) updated rooms with private bathrooms and more modern conveniences than the 1875 Beach House.

Erosion of the beachfront, partially caused by the repeated closure of the Manasquan Inlet by storms left the footings of the Beach House exposed.

The house managers felt they needed to compete by selling alcohol.

The law required that applicants list their intent in the local paper, with references to vouch for their ability to run a square house. Halstead Wainwright (who simply signed as a notary) and E.S. V. Shultz appended their names to vouch for the character of the men.

Schultz was supported by the Sunday School and the Beach House got its license. Certain people would not patronize a house with a bar, and the managers could not continue to attract the same quality of guests as they had in the past and the Beach House began its slow decline.

There was another place to host events in town. Lewis Alfred Dalrymple Percival, a rich man in his 30s threw a huge party at the Sea Girt and Spring Lake Country Club in 1910.

He had a fine pedigree. He was of English paternal lineage, and on the maternal side is a grandson of Sir John Dalrymple, of Lochinch Castle, Wigtonshire, Scotland.

Mrs Percival (right) with Mrs. Victor Von Schlagell (left) enjoy the horses (1914 Bain News photo)

After graduation from the University of London, Mr. Percival came to this country and started the Amalgamated Paint Company. In 1905. he began exclusively manufacturing compositions for bottoms of ships, and other marine paints.

His scientific research focused on 'Amalgamated" compositions for the bottom of ships, and marine paints for all purposes The line included special paints for every part of the ship, in and out. They studied the fouling properties of waters in every part of the globe. Ships sailing between American Atlantic ports and those of the United Kingdom needed a totally different formula than a vessel trading with the West Coast of Africa.

In addition to the horse shows and polo, the country club introduced women’s basketball on horseback. It was more ladylike than asking them to run up the court. They also began racing automobiles around the track, a nod to the Roeblings who had an auto manufacturing company. Their car, the Mercer was one of the fastest roadsters in America