Every property has had a parade of owners, some with great stories. This is one of the most distinctive homes in Sea Girt. Here is the history of some of it’s early owners.
Charles Noble of Yonkers purchased the unsold parcels of the Sea Girt resort property in 1907 in an effort to complete the community which had languished since the bank scandals of 1888. He bought the assets for $225,000. There were approximately 600 building lots. He renamed many of the streets after east coast cities and changed the Avenues to Boulevards. Stockton Avenue became Crescent Parkway, and he moved Stockton south near the old Stockton Beach House hotel.
He purchased the lot at 212 Crescent Parkway for $1 from the land company in 1909, and proceeded to build the most elegant home in the community. The three-story Georgian Colonial had a billiard room in the basement and three stories of large windows and wood-paneled walls. The plan was that his wife and two children would summer in Sea Girt while Charles sold the lots. He used the services of Frank Druand as an attorney to help work out some of the entanglements of the land company deeds. The house was not ready for the summer of 1910, so the family stayed at the Tremont Hotel on Chicago Blvd.
The family never got to enjoy the house. Unfortunately, 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 at 52 that summer of kidney failure.
Charles kept the house and he and his daughter Evelyn would come to Sea Girt in the summers. But he would sell the house on Crescent Parkway to lawyer Frank Durand nine years later in 1920.
He stayed involved in the project. In 1923 Noble purchased a mile-long strip of land along the beachfront from American Timber. The company was the legacy of Henry Herbert Yard who had purchased the Sea Girt Beach front during one of the Land Improvement reorganizations in 1889. At one time Henry could brag that he had owned the Manasquan, Spring Lake, Sea Girt, and Belmar beach fronts. Noble donated the land to the town so that they could build a beach pavilion and control their own beach. Charles Noble died in Glenn Cove Long Island in 1931.
Frank Durand, Sea Girt Founding Father
Oscar Durand was a train engineer from the time he was 21 years old. He ran trains for the Pennsylvania Railroad between Jersey City and Millstone where he met his wife Elizabeth. When the Long Branch line opened in 1875, he was the first engineer on the line and drove the first engine across the Raritan River drawbridge. As the line extended south to the new resort of Sea Girt, in 1878, he moved his wife Elizabeth and three children, Kate, Sarah and Frank to Manasquan and built a house on Virginia Ave. They were a fixture in the community.
In February 1899 on a Saturday morning, Oscar was driving a train north toward the Point Pleasant station. As he approached a siding, the open switch signal was broken off, and he could not see that the train would be switched to the siding before it was too late. As he threw the engine into reverse, the engine plowed into a set of cars holding block ice. The engine tore through the cars, and the ice slid under the wheels of the engine, lifting it off the rails. The engine toppled over, killing Oscar, his hand still gripping the throttle.
Oscar & Elizabeth's son Frank became an attorney in Asbury Park. He helped his mother to sue the PRR and she won a $5,000 judgment and vindication that his father was a good and careful engineer.
As lead partner in his firm, Frank focused on real estate law. Frank and his wife Florence were raising his children Frank Jr., Walter, and Elizabeth in his parents' Virginia Ave home. The kids attended Asbury Park High School. Manasquan HS did not open until 1931.
Florence began suffering from tuberculosis around 1904. She died at age 40 in 1909, in their home in Manasquan.
In 1920 Frank purchased the Georgian Colonial Mansion from Charles Noble. He built a garage behind the house. He was Special Master to the Chancery Court of NJ and very successful in his firm in real estate matters. He acquired real estate for himself around the Shore, and was a director of the First National Bank of Spring Lake. When the community of Sea Girt was being organized as a borough in 1917, Frank acted as counsel to the board, and cleaned up the remnants of the Sea Girt Land Improvement Company, acting as the 'Resident Director'. This way the borough obtained clear title to its municipal property.
Frank had what newspapers described as a nervous breakdown shortly after buying the house. When he returned to his practice in the Spring of 1923, he was suffering from cancer. Frank died after an operation in New York in October 1923. He was waked in the house at 212 Crescent Parkway and lauded as a founding father of the community and a lead partner with a 45-year law career.
His son Frank Jr. became the first Municipal Clerk in Sea Girt. He also was an attorney and built a Sea Girter on Chicago Blvd shortly after his father bought on Crescent. His brother Walter built a house on Beacon. Over time Frank would become a councilman, then mayor of Sea Girt from 1927-1931, State Assemblyman, and then State Senator, where he acted as Governor on two occasions, including at the opening of the Lincoln Tunnel. He was the auditor for the State of NJ, Frank Jr. died at 83 in his second Sea Girt home at 220 The Terrace in 1978.
The Church Insurance Man
The next owner at 212 Crescent was Everard C. Stokes, an executive with the Royal Assurance Company and then the Church Property Fire Insurance Company. at 83 Maiden Lane in NY. Everard, who was born in London, sold fire insurance to churches. He was mystified why churches of all faiths usually valued the contents more than their buildings, and he lectured pastors and bishops to increase their building insurance.
Prior to coming to the US, he had been assigned to the Near East Division, with an office in Cairo Egypt. He was very successful with Greek Orthodox Churches in the region. He was unsuccessful in selling insurance to the many mosques as the Koran forbade it. He also tried and failed to insure the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. The Franciscans at the site of Jesus' crucifixion, burial, and resurrection believed the Catholics of the world would rebuild if it were to burn. Through his work, he met many members of royal families as churches were sometimes state-owned.
In Malta, Everard invited Archduke Ferdinand of Austo-Hungary to sit on a chair with a broken leg. He joked that if the Archduke had died falling off the chair, it may have averted the first World War. Upon coming to the US, he found a willing market as fire was all too common in wooden buildings with lit candles.
He left Spring Lake and moved to Sea Girt and purchased 212 Crescent after the death of Frank Durand. When Frank's son was mayor in the late 1920s, Evered wrote a series of letters complaining about the Council and Mayor hiring a dog catcher. Several stray dogs had been terrorizing nesting pheasants and bothering beach walkers. The resulting rules regarding keeping dogs leashed and licensing them got Everard Stokes heated. He declared:
"The law should be applied with common sense; I came to Sea Girt to enjoy the advantages of living in the country and cultivating my dogs. I sought to allow my dogs liberty and now I find myself face to face with a situation that makes it a physical Impossibility to break the law.
And I have resentment against those who are enforcing the laws. Dogs are not canaries; they cannot be kept in cages. They are not tortoises; they run very fast. And Sea Girt Is not New York. It has been said that it is cruel to keep a dog in a New York apartment. But it is no less cruel than keeping a dog in Sea Girt under such arduous restrictions."
The Stokes were active in Saint Uriel's church for 25 years, Everard as a vestryman and his wife Phyllis helped with the children's programs and tea fundraisers. They had three girls Beatrice, Margaret, and Katharine. Stokes was on the Sea Girt Borough Council by 1940, and advocated strongly to abandon sections of the boardwalk south of Philadelphia Blvd after a winter storm during WWII. He also wrote three books, Poems and Ballads of the Jersey Shore, The Bubble Womb and Poems of a Bee Keeper.
In February 1951 Stokes was making his way home on the "Broker", the very crowded southbound North Jersey Coastline train. The Central Jersey RR was on strike, and the Broker was packed with over 1,000 passengers. Near Woodbridge, a temporary wooden overpass had been recently put in place near the junction of the Coastline and the Mainline to accommodate the construction of the New Jersey Turnpike. It was dark and wet, near freezing and the engineer did not slow to the required 25 mph. The tracks shifted under the weight of the train and 8 of 11 cars derailed with several sliding down a 30-foot embankment. 81 passengers died in the largest train disaster in NJ history. Everard Stokes at 68 was one of the passengers killed.
The Good Doctor
Dr. Harrold Murray, a local pediatrician and his wife Beatrice purchased the home after Stokes death.
After undergraduate & graduate work at Seton Hall, and getting his doctorate at Columbia Dr. Murray had a distinguished career in Newark before coming to Sea Girt around 1957.
He started the Department of Pediatrics at both Saint James and Saint Michaels Hospitals. His private practice was in the Central Ward of Newark, and he often did not charge poor mothers. A supporter of the church and the father of a priest, Dr. Murray was named a Knight of the Holy Sepulcher by Cardinal Spellman and a Knight St. Gregory by Pope Pious XII for his pioneering work with children. When he moved his practice to Sea Girt, he consulted to thirteen hospitals on pediatrics and began a crusade for a state law to protect children who had been subjected to beatings. Based on his efforts, Governor Hughes signed one of the first bills in the country designed to protect children from abuse.
His wife Beatrice had collected art and renovated the house. They took the billiard room in the basement and made it the Doctor's office. The area was decorated with artwork, candy-striped banisters, wood paneling, chandeliers, and a collection of antique baby bottles.
A lavish full-page feature on 212 Crescent appeared in the Asbury Park Press in 1962, with photos of the dining room with Beartrice's family chandelier and the massive brick fireplace.
Their six children and eleven grandchildren enjoyed the house. His son Harrold Junior became a priest, and eventually, a Monsignor and director of administration for the Newark Diocese. Beatrice became a teacher. She married a pediatrician William Farley and helped him with his practice. and Sarah (Grantham) was a mother and homemaker in Manasquan. His son Michael was the assistant to the President director at Seton Hall, and John was a Korean War Vet and Sonetronics employee.
Their son Peter who was a lawyer and the first state public defender reportedly jumped from the Raritan Parkway Bridge and died in 1968. His mother Beatrice passed away six months later. Dr. Murray died in 1977, and after his affairs were settled the house went on the market and finally sold in 1981 for $128,000.
The next few decades the house has seen a tremendous increase in value. While the owners may have interesting stories, they can wait to be told as most are still with us.
Robert Kwiecenski and his wife Sandra purchased the house from the Murrays and owned it for the next ten years.
Kevin and Cheryl McManus enjoyed the home from 1991-2006 and sold it for $2.1 million
Walter and Lori Bailey Bracero purchased it in ’06 and sold to John and Louise Finnerty in 2012, paying $3,750,000.
It was listed for $6.250,000 in 2023, and almost immediately was under contract.
Main Stairwell
The butler call system from 1910