By Kathy Arlt, Contributing Writer @Blogfinger
First of all, allow me to introduce our guest photographer, Alfred Clark. He was the contractor and foreman for the construction of the North End Hotel, a quite grand structure that opened in July, 1911. Here is Mr. Clark standing on the site of the hotel. The building in the background is the Asbury Park Casino, which was built in 1905.
Pictured below are some of the workers he supervised, with just some of the lumber that went into the hotel’s construction.
Because, as you can see, building the North End Hotel required lots and lots of lumber.
Bear in mind that in the early 1900s there were no compressor-fired nail guns or battery-powered drills. (Msrs. Black and Decker patented an electric drill—it weighed 21 pounds and cost $230—in 1914; the first portable electric circular saw wasn’t patented until 1924.) Just getting lumber up to the higher stories was a huge effort. But for that there was a special tool: a steam-powered “elevator.”
And here is the almost-finished hotel. The final building cost was—gasp—a staggering $300,000. (In today’s dollars: roughly 7 million.)
Next time: The North End Hotel opens for business.
Thanks Kathy for bringing the HSOG archives to life. Looking forward to learning more about our special town’s history!
Great article, Kathy. It puts the whole area and the new proposed North End plans into perspective. I especially like the picture of the old casino. What a gorgeous building. When will that ever be brought back to its former glory?
The HPC would love the interesting curved roofline on the small shack in the bottom photo. Kathy, your history lessons are a nice regular feature on Blogfinger that I look forward to.
ken
OSHA would never permit ties these days with machinery around. 😉 Bygone era.
Most of the construction workers seem to be wearing ties. When’s the last time you saw that?
Thanks Kathy for another fascinating look at historic Ocean Grove. I enjoyed the guest photographer aspect. Most of Mr. Clark’s images are excellent and he was probably using a large format view camera, the kind that had to be placed on a tripod and then you stick your head under a black “shmata.” *
The 35 mm camera hadn’t been introduced yet. The “film” was probably silver coated and made by Kodak. It had to be loaded manually onto metal plates. Mr. Clark would then expose the images and then take the plates to a darkroom for chemical processing.
Today there are photographers who specialize in architectural images and require special wide angle lenses and digital cameras. Although digital technology now dominates photography, one hundred years after these photos were taken, there are still serious photographers using old fashioned view cameras, film and darkrooms to print gorgeous fine-art images on fiber based silver papers.
* According to the Blogfinger official Yiddish dictionary, a “shmata” is a rag or a piece of cloth. Sometimes it is used to describe an article of clothing— usually something that is cheaply made. The entire garment industry, even today, is often called “the shmata business,” but I doubt that the expression is used for Ralph Lauren or Coco Chanel.
Paul (Goldfinger) Photography editor @Blogfinger
Wow, great pictures and info. It was a fabulous building for its day.