1922

The Hollywood Bowl Amphitheater opened its first season in Los Angeles with Alfred Hertz conducting the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Fascism grew in Italy and Mussolini took control. Punitive economics from the Treaty of Versailles helped ignite hyper-Inflation in Germany. Robin Hood, a silent film produced, directed, and starring Douglas Fairbanks cost almost $1 million to make, with sets larger than anything until Titanic was made in the 1990s. It was the first ‘Blockbuster’ movie.

America’s economy boomed, and the era known as the Roaring Twenties was in full swing. Real estate at the Shore was moving, and the successful children of immigrants looked to come to Sea Girt. It was particularly attractive to the residents of Northern New Jersey. Martin Maloney had made the entire region popular with Irish families.

Psotcard of the church before the belfry fire

The Sea Girt fire department got its first big save. St Uriel’s belfry caught fire. A worker cleaning the organ identified the fire and the Sea Girt Fire Department kept the fire to the west end of the church. Spring Lake responded a few minutes later with two more apparatus. Neighbors emptied the church of its valuables and prevented smoke and water damage to the religious objects. The $7,500 in damage was covered by insurance. No other buildings were damaged.

Charles Noble wrapped up business. He sold the remaining 600 lots to local men from Sea Girt and Spring Lake, but he withheld the beach. The syndicate were builders and real estate investors. Lawyer Frank Durand, Fred Schock, D.H. Hill, George and Howard Height, garagemen Tim Hurley and Harry Clayton, plus Benjamin Y. Patterson, son of Spring Lake’s first mayor.

The town settled with the Yard family for $3,000 for the 30-foot strip of beach east of the town’s holdings. The Pavilion project was stuck in the courts.

Another group took on selling the Country Club property and divided it into lots. Otto Morris would assume sales there.

Teams of horses get ready to move the Stockton Beach House after the demo of the old hotel (John Shibbles Collection

Early Stockton Postcard

The core of the Beach House was being saved. C. Edgar Newman, house mover of Spring Lake was hired to move the two-story, 52 by 13S foot building 500 yards southward, to be attached to the Stockton, at the end of the hotel, for Mrs. Nora Stubbs, who with her Husband William also ran the Warren hotel in Spring Lake. She was from Kansas and the couple operated a hotel in Florida in the winter. The 1922 Season was her first full year in operation, and the hotel was a huge success.

The Stubbs family rand both the Warren Hotel and the Stockton

The old Mississippi virgin logs of the original Stockton mansion were massive, and Newman said the moving of this building was one of the biggest jobs in his line accomplished in this vicinity. The job required 82 heavy timbers where, in ordinary cases, only 10 or 12 are used. Winter weather prevented the foundation from being poured and the Commodore’s house sat on the timbers until very late in the spring The old house was developed into a modern tea room and rest parlor, and later rooftop bar.