Bob Bowné shot this photo “in the ’80’s” on the day before they took out the Ferris wheel. Later the whole building was torn down. ©
Submitted by Rich Amole, Blogfinger historian and reporter. He found it on EBay. 2014
Tickets to ride. Submitted by Rich Amole, Blogfinger historian/reporter.
Rich Amole: “Just behind the Asbury Park Casino is a ticket booth, perhaps a place to purchase those passports to fun at the Casino Amusements. The edge of the Carousel can be seen along with some games of chance back in the time when you could smell the popcorn cookin’ and that salty breeze blowin’ through all the entrances.”
This photograph is from 1980 and is by Joe Maloney from the World Wide Web.
Jan 5, 2002. Here’s something from the side of that building before it came down. By Paul Goldfinger ©
Nancy C : Wrong. Not True. The Save Tillie group stepped up to save the Palace as did the Asbury Park Historical Society and a number of other groups including Preservation NJ.
Although the roof was caving in and the building was in bad shape(due to Asbury Park’s neglect of it) it could have been shored up until renovated. The Save Tillie group at their expense had an engineer inspect it who said as much.
Bill Sitar who was/is a major developer tried to buy it but was unable to negotiate a reasonable deal with the developer. I understand that a woman (Brooke Tarabor ?)who was behind the creation of the Food Bank on Route 66 was interested in doing something non profit with the Palace. However a non profit operation was/is not in the developer’s plans. Remember this is same developer who evicted senior citizens group/club from the boardwalk.
Going back to my earlier post about Asbury putting Tillie Face & Bumper Cars on display : Maybe they could place them in parking lots at same locations where they originally were. That would be ironic. However doubt they would do this as AP/developer would lose parking spaces / $ by doing so.
One of the reasons it was torn down was because the roof was falling in and they were worried about safety. No one stepped up to save it, so it went down.
So to cater to out of town/area tourists a local, landmark, historic(both state & federal registry), iconic building gets demolished. Yep – brilliant. Not.
The promise(premise) was that the Palace was being demolished so that a fancy entertainment/movie theatre complex would be put there. Not a parking lot. That was 10 years ago.
Least AP could do is take the Tillie Face and Bumper Cars that were removed and saved from the Palace out of exile and put them on public display. Thats another story and yet another broken promise.
Must admit as much as it was made into a parking lot and not condo’s etc., they made the best move in their quest to have available a reasonably nice place to park for those who visit during the tourist season. What a novel idea!
Tear down an old structure and simply make the best choice for the town’s residents and visitors.
I agree. I still bemoan the fact that they didn’t keep and renovate this iconoclastic building as a museum containing artifacts from Asbury’s Golden Days.
But the council had no visionary courage—it seemed all they saw were dollar signs.
And now where the Palace sat is a blacktopped parking lot. What a shame . It could have & should have been saved.