By Kathy Arlt, Contributing Writer @Blogfinger
So…you’ve seen all the movies on offer at the Scenario. What else could you do at the North End Hotel in 1911?
You could have your silhouette drawn by this gentleman, and then get an ice cream cone at the stand behind him.
After that, how about a little “healthy exercise”…like Box Ball Bowling?
As you can probably guess, bowling in 1911 was very different than it is today—no automatic pin-spotting, for one thing—and Box Ball Bowling was very different than regular bowling. Instead of ten pins arranged in a pyramid shape, there were only five pins in a straight line, and the balls were much smaller and had no finger holes. As this ad indicates, the alleys were portable—and profitable!
Movies and bowling were the only North End Hotel activities advertised in the 1911 editions of the Ocean Grove Times, so I’m not sure when the other amusements opened, either inside or around it. But as these 1950s photos show, Ocean Grovers had lots to choose from as time went by.
And that was just one side of the Hotel. On the boardwalk side, visitors were directed inside to experience the “Holy Land Quadorama…A Gigantic Spectacle…Marvel of Exactness and Beauty.”
We have no pictures of the Quadorama at the Museum, and I’d really love to know what it was like. Maybe someone reading this can fill me in?
And it’s a shame that the homeowner’s association doesn’t want to acknowledge that Ocean Grove’s boardwalk areas had a commercial past at both the North End and the South End!