By Kathy Arlt, Contributing Writer @Blogfinger

The moment I saw this photograph in the archives I was intrigued. It was in a folder marked “Lawrence House,” and the address given was 28 Main Avenue.

Maybe that street address doesn’t pinpoint a location you can visualize while you’re reading this, but if I said that this was where The Sampler Inn once stood, you’d know exactly where 28 Main Avenue is, and exactly what a “today” photograph would show. And that was exactly where I thought this story was going.

But there was just one problem. When I got home and compared this photograph to another early photo of The Sampler Inn (when it was a hotel called The Aldine), it was obvious they were different buildings. So where was the Lawrence House? This advertisement in the June 22, 1878 edition of Ocean Grove Record doesn’t give a precise address:

Nor does this July 25, 1903, Ocean Grove Times report of a fire at the Lawrence House:

Or even this July 20, 1903, New York Times report on the same fire:

As far as I can determine, the Lawrence House never reopened after this fire. Instead it appears that the owners took over The Aldine in 1904, renamed it The Lawrence, and turned it over to the Lawrence House proprietress at the time of the fire, Miss Maggie White. So, given the similarity of the hotels’ names and the fact that The Lawrence was a Sampler Inn precursor, the mystery of how the Lawrence House photograph was previously misidentified is solved.

As for solving the mystery of where, exactly, the Lawrence House was so that I can show you what’s there now…well, that turned out to be much easier. The Historical Society has compiled a “hotel book,” which provides the name and address of every property that was ever a hotel or boarding house. The Lawrence House was located at 43 Main Avenue. And here’s what’s there today: