No Merger

Archduke Ferdinand was assassinated and Europe quickly devolved into war. What would be called the Great War had begun. While the US would not enter the conflict for a few more years, the economy was impacted. Henry Yard passed away in Oroville California. His widow and son moved to the east side of The Terrace near the inlet. They managed the holdings of American Timber with a much lighter hand. Elliston P. Morris, the first cottage owner also died. His son Marriott and daughter, Elizabeth (Bess) each inherited one of the two houses he owned on the oceanfront.

J. Bunford Samuel and Elliston’s son Marriott C. Morris were in a battle with Charles Noble and the Sea Girt Company. Noble made it clear that the investments of the new company would focus on the vacant areas of town as lots were sold. The cottage owners in the Park and around the lighthouse wanted erosion addressed and their streets better maintained.

Samuel began negotiations with Mayor OH Brown of Spring Lake to annex the north part of Sea Girt, including the homes along the ocean. Samuel offered $25,000 to Spring Lake towards the improvement of Wreck Pond as an incentive. The narrowing of the inlet by the land company in prior years had made flooding an issue on the Spring Lake side of the inlet and the outlet at the ocean clogged frequently. Other times, the water ran out and the mud flats smelled.

The old Sea Girt residents wanted the benefits of municipal authority. They paid taxes to Wall township, but the Land Company owned the streets and utilities, so Wall provided no services. Samuel, and the Morris family had been under the control of the various land companies for almost 40 years. They wanted it ended.

A bit of class prejudice might have also been in play. The cottage builders in the new ‘Home Resort’ of Sea Girt could build small, and this attracted speculative builders rather than the millionaire mansions that were still being put up in Spring Lake. Thomas Morrison, the Pa Steel millionaire cousin of Andrew Carnegie was planning to leave the Sea Girt Beachfront for a lavish estate in the north of Spring Lake.

The new income taxes in 1914, followed by estate taxes in 1916 would severely impact the inherited wealth of the industrialists who built in the prior century. A more modest Sea Girt would attract a different caliber of people vs. its original enclave on the oceanfront.

Spring Lake also opened the new Essex and Sussex after another large fire in 1909. It reestablished Spring Lake as the top resort.

One example of the rush to build more modestly was Miss Edna Blanchard Lewis, a pioneer female insurance broker (she was called “the only woman insurance broker in the world”) and a former instructor at the New York Institution for the Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb. Edna announced she would build with her associate, Jean Alison Hunter, superintendent at New Haven Hospital, six new “Sea Girt cottages” on spec. They would all be different,

"A cottage by the sea appeals to most one in July or August, yes and even in September, so we want to have plenty of them to supply the demand. They are cunning ones, too--just as complete as can be, from start to finish--with fireplaces and sleeping porches and all the things cottagers like. Why, we are even putting shower baths on the back porch for bathers, as a last finishing touch. We are about eight minutes' walk from the country and polo club, station, etc., and the trolley goes within 200 feet of our doors.”

The ‘Sea Girter’ became a feature of the town, and its modest size was more affordable to upper-middle-class owners. Most were still summer houses, but a handful of permanent residents found the area pleasant all year long.

30 Street lights were installed along Washington Ave.; the first in the town.

Noble’s fight with the old residents was perhaps also triggered by his mood. He built an elaborate Georgian Colonial at 212 Crescent Parkway but his family never got to enjoy the house. In March 1911, 14-year-old Austin Noble was practicing on the trampoline at their home in Yonkers, when he fell, killing himself. Emma, his mother, distraught, immediately took ill and died of kidney failure months later. Charles kept the house and he and his daughter Evelyn would come to Sea Girt in the summers, but he was clearly broken by the tragedy.

The Noble Cottage was never enjoyed by Charles Noble’s family

By November it was obvious that even if Spring Lake wanted to take the part of town offered by Samuel, it would require state legislative action, and there was no sentiment for Spring Lake to go through the trouble to acquire the land. The old cottage owners began to gather their neighbors to advocate for municipal status of their own.

Another fight was that of the Governor and the Camp. An editorial read: “Nominally incidents of the encampment of the National Guard are but really an agency to further the political ambitions of the Governor, they are paid for out of the State treasury, and to them should be bidden the common people as well as the politicians and social climbers. What the Legislature should do is to refuse longer to appropriate three thousand dollars a year for the "maintenance of cottage at Sea Girt and entertainment therein."

There was a time when the entertainment cost fell to the supporters of the Governor not to the state.

That should still be the rule. Let those who dance pay the fiddler. …There can be should no defense of the grafting made possible by the maintenance of the house at Sea Girt.