In August 1888, the Looff Carouselle opened at the Merry-go-Round Palace at Asbury Park. Proprietor Ernest Schnitzler built an enclosed building at the foot of Fletcher Lake on the south side of town to hold his new attraction and protect it from the weather. Charles Looff, a wood carver, had created the first of his rides in Coney Island in 1876. By the late 1880s town squares and county fairs wanted them, and many competitors popped up. Looff’s animals were some of the best, and the Asbury Park collection was one of the most elaborate. Its three rows of standing animals (later four with jumpers) included carved beasts from another quality outfit, Dentzel’s of Philadelphia. Red Bank, Keyport, and the County fair at Freehold had smaller versions. By the end of the 1800s, there were dozens in the state.
There were horses, menagerie animals like giraffes, goats, and camels, plus benches carved by Looff’s artisans for ladies who had no desire to ride an animal side saddle. The fancy side of the animals, usually with more carved detail, faced right in the direction of spectators. Tails were sometimes made of horse hair and antlers were from real animals. There were steel rings to grab to challenge men. Driven by a steam engine, the engineer was able to count the rotations by following the “Lead Horse”, one with a fancier saddle and reigns.
Children rode early in the day, with couples usually waiting till the evening. Schnitzler required 'colored’ riders to wait until 10:30 PM to ride at the Palace. This was consistent with James Bradley’s rules which limited where people of color could swim and when they could walk the boards. John A. Muzzio, with a competing “newer merry-go-round” at Lake and Heck Avenues proposed a 10:00 time to win business.
The servicing of the resorts throughout the Monmouth Shore in the late 1800s required large numbers of temporary staff, many from New York, Trenton, and Philadelphia. The West End of Asbury Park became a friendly place for these workers to settle, and a place to stay for travelers unwelcomed in many other resorts. James Bradley, who founded the resort was a micromanager and he struggled with what to do about the fallout of the ‘co-mingling’ of races.
The Asbury Park Press noted in May 1882, “Outside of Bradley’s commercial and residential district, a second community of black residents and other assorted working-class citizens had settled in a community known as the “West End.” African Americans of the West End established schools and churches, and served as hosts for black tourists who regularly visited Asbury Park from Newark, Jersey City, Philadelphia, and New York as part of the African Methodist Church’s annual sea shore ‘jubilees.’ “
Worried about the protests of tourists having to share the resort with “colored people”, Bradley limited access to his beach and boardwalk. He imposed a northern version of Jim Crow laws, restricting access, which he called “Commission Hours”.
“The time is coming, indeed may have arrived,” he said, in 1882, “when some decided action must be taken to show our colored friends that the board walk and pavilions are private property.”
The Asbury Park Daily Journal in 1885 ran an editorial saying “The colored people are becoming a nuisance in Asbury Park. … We allow them to vote, to have full standing and protection in law, but when it comes to social intermingling then we object most seriously and emphatically.”
Strolling for Blacks was limited to nighttime. Bradley was quoted: “They are allowed to use the walk after 10 o'clock, and they make good use of it. They are a quiet, orderly set, and their well-known love of display is rarely noticed, as it is hidden under the cover of the night”.
Since the bath houses and private beaches catered to whites only, Bradley was proud to announce his solution to the problem.
The Newark News reported, “In former years bathing privileges on the beach have been denied to the colored people. They could not procure suits or rooms at any of the bathing offices, and were forced to don their bathing attire at their own homes when they desired to bathe. Founder Bradley, who owns the beach and the bathing grounds, Saturday devised a scheme whereby colored people will be enabled to bathe during certain hours of the day. He has established a branch bathing department, under the charge of a well-known colored resident, where the colored people can procure suits and rooms at a reduced rate between the hours of 5 and 7 in the morning, which will be known as "commission hours."
The departments will be entirely separate, and suits and towels reserved for the use of the colored people will be marked "Commission Hours." The innovation has caused general satisfaction among the colored people, and seems to provide a solution for the most difficult part of the colored question.”
The site of the bathing area was in the southern part of town. He would say closest to the West End. They would say nearest the sewer outlet, although it was more likely runoff from the Natatorium. Very few people availed themselves of the 5-7 AM time, and in later years this would be extended to 3-5 PM. Laws preventing people from approaching other groups on the beach kept Black bathers from leaving their designated sand. Fed up with restrictions, many Black tourists found a friendlier Belmar to the south.
Asbury Park was not alone in tensions. Keyport had a particularly nasty gang of boys that hung out around its merry-go-round. Fights were recorded there many times. An 1897 article in the Red Bank Register noted the problem,
“Another disgraceful row occurred at the merry-go-round at Keyport last Saturday by the same gang of hoodlums who so unmercifully beat a negro three weeks ago. Last Saturday night they set upon a Swede and beat him severely. After pounding him for a time they got in a free fight among themselves, in which two or three members of the gang were considerably battered”.
Nine years earlier, in 1888 the violence at Keyport was particularly horrific:
“For several Saturday nights previous, a mixed gang of whites and negroes had gathered about this merry-go-round, and the whites amused themselves by flouring the blacks as they rode round, the result being more or less fighting every time and it was evident that serious trouble would ensue.”
In late June, John Tolival brought a self cocking, English bulldog 82 caliber revolver to the amusements. “He was warned by a friend not to go down to the beach but he ignored this and got into a fight soon after he got there. He was getting worsted and becoming frightened drew his revolver and fired a shot into the air, he says, to scare off the crowd, but as they closed about him he leveled the pistol directly at the crowd and fired, the ball striking William English, 18.” Keyport Enterprise June 30, 1888. English survived his injuries, and Tolival got a year of hard labor in the state penitentiary. No one was prosecuted for “flouring.”
The next summer at Asbury, citizens tried to have the matter of bias at the public amusements decided by a judge. On June 25th William Nelson who had left his shift at Dixon’s ice cream was simply watching the ride at the Palace when he was asked to leave. He got into a fight with a bouncer and they were both arrested and fined. The next day, the Black community planned to descend on the Palace to assert their rights.
“The report had been started early in the morning that a large number of colored people intended to visit the merry-go-round in the evening and if refused admission by Proprietor Schnitzler, it was proposed to carry the case to court. Mr. Schnitzler heard of this scheme and immediately had a number of tickets printed reading: "Asbury Park and Ocean Grove Courousselle, admission (season ticket) twenty-five dollars."
These tickets were placed in charge of two attached of the concern, and all but two entrances closed. The tickets were then freely given to the white people, but none to the colored folks, and it is scarcely necessary to say that they did not buy any.
A number of colored men and a few women hung around the doors of the building, but no effort was made by any of them to enter. Chief of Police Bailey and Justice Borden both spent some time there, and Mr. Bradley was one of the visitors also.” APP June 27, 1889
These “acts of indignation” were led by the citizens of Asbury. Pastor of Saint Stephens Zion Church Reverend James F. Robinson was quoted. “We will take no dictation from James A. Bradley or any other white man on the face of the earth,” Robinson shouted. “Mr. Bradley and the white people object to the Negroes on the beach, where the free air of heaven blows and yet in the dining room they are willing to have the Negro sweat right over them.“
“Mr. Bradley might just as well try to hang his handkerchief on the horns of the moon as to keep out the black man from the beach,” the Reverend continued. “We fought for liberty and the salvation of this Union, and we are going to enjoy a piece of it.”
The segregation continued both officially and unofficially well past the death of James Bradley in 1921. In 1934, Kathyrn Harris sued after her niece was forcibly removed from the Palace merry-go-round by an attendant. A public apology and an insistence that their policy was not to discriminate led to the integration of the ride. Article: Segregated Seashore, Asbury Park Historical Society by Charlie Horner, Lorraine Stone and Owen Flanagan
Asbury’s slow decline started with the depression and the second world war, and accelerated after jet air travel and the Garden State Parkway opened. Great Adventure in Jackson and Disney re-defined the American amusement park, leaving the 80-year-old Palace Amusements a relic in a city filled with old rooming houses and buildings well past their prime.
The 1888 Palace Amusements building was torn down in 2004 after sitting abandoned for almost 15 years. The ornate Carousel House which held a competing merry-go-round still stands. It was built in 1929 and designed by the same architects as Grand Central Station and the Royal Hawaiian Hotel.
After failed attempts to save the ride, the horses and menagerie of the Palace’s Looff carousel were auctioned off by Gurnsey’s in a record-breaking sale in 1989. The closest nearby machine of its caliber is the newly restored Seaside Heights Casino carousel which was saved and will be in operation for the 2023 season, and it will join the new smaller hand-carved Pier Village Carousel on the Long Branch boards. All will be invited to ride without restriction.
http://www.palaceamusements.com/carousel.html
Photo Library of Congress John Margolies Roadside America Collection 1978 Asbury Park Palace LC-MA05- 9525 [P&P]