In need of a Beach Pavilion
Radio carried live sports for the first time. Charlie Chaplin starred in The Kid with Jackie Coogan.
Warren G. Harding was sworn in as president, after promising “A Return to Normalcy”. He passed a budget and accounting act requiring federal spending to be budgeted for the first time and he pushed for new tariffs.
The Borough of Sea Girt had lost the subsidy of the hotels providing lifeguards for its patrons. The Beach House always provided its own beach master, but that hotel had been closed for over two years. The New Stockton in the Pines did not have a soft opening until August 1921. So the only guarded place to swim was between the Tremont and the Inlet, and the town carried the full cost of lifeguards.
Nora Stubbs opened the Stockton in 1921. The grand opening would wait until construction was more complete the next season
There also was a need for a new bathing pavilion to replace the old changing rooms of the Tremont. When the old Land Companies owned the property, the hotel hired the beach masters and ran the bathhouse. Their property was now a resting home for nuns and teachers. They dragged the old changing room north and west next to the Tremont as, but that was not a permanent solution.
The town passed ordinance 19 to purchase residential lots 7-12 on block 3 of the 1909 map. This has always been the most crowded section of the Beach between Chicago and Beacon.
Bad erosion prevented the town from building Ocean Avenue. Marriot Morris Photo Monmouth County Historical Society
This was a problem because B. Earnest Robinson had put up a home on the beachfront to the North of Saul Wahl, the old home of J. Bunford Samuel on Brooklyn Blvd. Ocean Avenue had never been constructed.
There were sandhills from the lighthouse to Samuel’s house and in order to allow Robinson to get to his cottage, the borough put in a small lane from Brooklyn Blvd. north toward Chicago Blvd.
The town wanted to put up the pavilion next to Robinson’s house. But his deed, like all other deeds, prevented him and his neighbors from building anything but residential property. Robinson sued the town, asking how they didn’t have the same restrictions, given the zoning.
Most agreed that the easier solution was to build the pavilion on the beach itself, east of the old Tremont pavilion. Except the borough did not own the beach. The Sea Girt Company still owned the beach where Ocean Avenue was supposed to go. Henry Yard, had also claimed a 30-foot strip of sand on the beach east of the unbuilt road into the American Timber Co.
Yard tried the same thing in Spring Lake, but they had settled their dispute 20 years earlier. American Timber also claimed the beachfront all the way to the Manasquan Inlet. The Yard family, Henry’s son, now lived on the east side of The Terrace in Sea Girt. He and his family would be much more accommodating in running American Timber than the colorful founder.
Marriott Morris and JB Samuel were making their case for their own jetties.
J. Bunford Samuel, still an opinion leader railed against the mayor and council. He wanted Ocean Avenue built in front of his house at the grade as proposed in the 1870s when he bought his lot. He wanted the Borough to settle its problems with the Yards as Spring Lake had. And he wanted the Pavillon and bath house off of the West side of the street. Finally, he wanted a fix to the erosion caused by the Beach House jetties installed in the prior decade.
While lot sales had picked up, there were still few taxpayers to pay the bill for this expensive wish list. There were even fewer voters (around 30), so it would not take many votes to toss out the existing politicians.