By Kathy Arlt: Contributing writer @Blogfinger (reposted from 2012 after receiving a January 2016 letter from a former waitress—see comments)
If The Sampler Inn was the most famous cafeteria in Ocean Grove, the Homestead was probably the most famous restaurant. It was in business for a long, long time, as this newspaper advertisement from the May, 1974, Neptune Times shows:
The precise date of its opening is hard to determine. Doing the math from the ad, it would appear to have opened in 1914…except for the fact that the 1973 season-opening announcement boasted that that would be its fifty-eighth season in business. (Somewhere along the line a 59th season got lost.) Ted Bell’s book, Ocean Grove in Vintage Postcards, puts the opening date at 1915, which is what one of the Homestead’s postcards proclaims. But further complicating the story of the Homestead’s very first opening day is a report from the Asbury Park Press in 1979, after the restaurant was closed forever. That newspaper stated that the Homestead began in Ocean Township in 1918 and was subsequently moved to Ocean Grove in 1938.
Whatever the true story is, there’s no doubt that the Homestead was a very popular place (famous for its fruit cup, which came topped with orange ice and a melon ball with a sprig of mint), and there are many people who remember the restaurant. I met one of them two years ago, at—of all places—El Rancho de las Golondrinas, a living history museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico. When a docent saw me write “Ocean Grove, NJ” in the guest book, she exclaimed, “Ocean Grove! I worked there as a waitress one summer, at the Homestead restaurant.”
She was too busy to talk to me about her experience, but no problem. I had another source of information, closer to home: my sister-in-law worked at the Homestead during either the 1973 or ’74 season, and she told me all about it.
Now, my sister-in-law is not from New Jersey; she’s from Massachusetts, and she was attending the College of New Rochelle, in New York, at the time. That was where she saw a notice on a bulletin board seeking waitresses for the Homestead restaurant in Ocean Grove during the summer. She took the job, despite knowing nothing about Ocean Grove, and, in her own words, “nothing about making money as a waitress. Because the town was dry, there were no drinks to pump up the bills and improve the generosity of the patrons. The tips were generally quite small.”
And the waitresses had expenses. They had to buy their own uniforms, and weekly rent for their lodgings in “a large, ramshackle Victorian on Seaview Avenue” was deducted from their paychecks. Everyone working at the Homestead was busy from the minute the doors opened in the morning until they closed at night, including the “rowdy eccentric crew” of dishwashers, who were the life of after-hours employee parties.
“At the end of the summer, I ended up with very little money to show for my efforts, so was not inclined to repeat the experience the following summer,” she told me. “The value of the experience was that I think I was one of the few people at Stetson Law School [in Florida] who had even heard of Ocean Grove, much less experienced the rules of ‘no bathing suits anywhere but the beach and on the boardwalk,’ ‘no booze’ and ‘no cars on Sunday.’” This gave her something to talk about when she met my brother.
But she has other memories of her summer working at the Homestead and living in Ocean Grove. She remembers driving around with her friend Pattie looking for a Saturday night parking space that wasn’t too far from the chained-at-midnight gates. And she got her ears pierced that summer, “in a jewelry store on Main Avenue, by a German lady who told me, ‘Once you do this, you can wear earrings always, and wake up looking vonderful.’” And finally, she remembers hanging out with another waitress, named Chantal, from New Mexico.
It would be too much of a coincidence if Chantal was that docent I met two years ago, wouldn’t it? Well, maybe…but then again, maybe not.
And where was the Homestead restaurant, some of you are probably wondering? Well, it was just too hot for me to go take a picture of it last week, but I’m sure you can identify it from this postcard:
I never had the chance to sample the Homestead’s fruit cup. After it closed in 1978, the site became a Perkins Pancake House. I did eat there a couple of times, wondering how and why a chain restaurant came to be located in such a prime beachfront spot: the view over the ocean was spectacular. I’m not sure what replaced Perkins, or what replaced whatever replaced that. I do know that the beach replenishment project of the 1990s put so much sand between the back windows and the ocean that there’s no table-side view of the ocean anymore.
JOE WILLIAMS AND COUNT BASIE “There Will Never Be Another You.”
I parked cars at the Homestead and worked in the Dishroom too. Anyone remember a guy named Alabama?
I worked in the Perkins restaurant in the summers of 1982-1983. I loved it there . Pam D’angelis was my manager . I’ve met some wonderful friends there. Wish it would reopen one day!
Best
Kim
I worked at the Homestead briefly in 1961, between my junior and senior years at Radford College in Virginia.
The Homestead hired far more wait staff than needed and started weeding them out when they didn’t meet their standards. Three of my roommates got fired before I did. If it hadn’t been for a chef at the restaurant I would probably have been fired sooner than I was. He would always signal me about a garnish I had left off.
I did get fired after my breakfast shift, but a relative of the owner got me a job at a Greek hotel. I moved in with another fired Homestead waitress who had a room at a residence hotel in Asbury Park, about four blocks from the beach. I later got a job at the Berkeley Carteret Hotel restaurant. It was a great summer. I was a Methodist but was shocked at Ocean Grove’s strict regulations.
It was a lovely, picturesque town but it was Asbury Park that I loved. I didn’t make enough money for a return train ticket but my parents sent me enough to get home. It was a great summer and I was thankful the Homestead had been my path to spend my summer there.
I waitressed at the Homestead Restaurant in the summers of 1964 and 1965. I was attending Slippery Rock in western Pennsylvania, answered an ad for waitressing at the shore, and went with several others to Ocean Grove. I have so many fond memories of people I met, the restaurant itself and all the crazy things that went on there, living for 53 cents a day (50 cents for board and 3 cents for toilet tissue) in the old part of the hotel looking over the lake with the swan boats, being able to eat only filet of sole or veal cutlet when you were working because they were the cheapest items on the menu, and so many other things. I thoroughly enjoyed my two summers there.
I do not remember the Homestead Restaurant; I only remember it being Perkins. After Perkins left, didn’t that restaurant revert back to the name Homestead? Not sure if this is true.
Jamie. A school can go anywhere, but that area should be dedicated to a special use. The only location issues for a school are ease of access and inexpensive land. Kids and teachers and administrators don’t need to look at the ocean or Wesley Lake when engaging in their studies and planning. The North End doesn’t fit the bill for a school.
But the North End does fit the bill for what tourists want: open space to rest, get a great view, shop, eat and organize their stuff for the beach. It also fits the bill for prospective home buyers and renters: great, beautiful spaces and places.
There is still a pool on the north end…Its just not filled
And Long Branch seems pretty pleased with the Promenade and Pier Village; both areas are always crowded, and restaurants have long waits in the evenings.
The north end pool should never have been bulldozed over after the mysterious fire in that area a few years ago; instead it should have been rebuilt. It was/could have been quite an attraction.
By the way I, understand that owner of the north end boardwalk building bought it cheap decades ago. Probably he is waiting until AP/OG developement reaches that area and then he will cash in his chips and make a mint. In the meantime, wouldn’t the upstairs, with its open space and ocean views, be a great space for say artists studios?
Wouldn’t that make an amazing location for Ocean Grove’s very own Charter School?
So true, Bythesea. The problem is that developers in New Jersey just want as many home sales as close to the sea as possible to maximize profit. Then they make these spectacular proposals to the towns and cities stuffing and choking the shorelines with hotels, condos, shops and few chairs. If OG and Asbury don’t commit to open space on the OG North End, and the Asbury North End, we are just going to be another Long Branch nightmare.
There will be no distinguishing OG or Asbury Park in the future. No grand vistas, or public places for shoppers and beachgoers. People won’t come here any more than they will go to any of the myriad of other shore towns. No distinguishing characteristics. Just everything shoved up against the shoreline while developers walk about with their boatload of cash.
Excellent comment Wisher. I too have wondered why the redevelopment district does not also include the casino, carousel building, power plant and the parking lot outside the carousel. Seems like a very cool integrated plan could be created. The current OG redevelopment district plans only appeal to those trying to maximize real estate tax income for Neptune Township (read — they are very bad for OG).
Is this stuff in AP already part of the AP redevelopment district? Is there any chance of coordination across the bridge? Can we get a reset on the plans for OG’s redevelopment district — even if AP is ruled out? Are there already rehab plans in the works for this part of AP?
I worked at the Homestead for 6 years in the 70’s, all through HS and part of college. Connie Hughes ran it then but her parents, Mr. and Mrs. “P,” were still around sometimes. It was a family business that they ran before her. Many great memories….
Why can’t the CMA get together with Asbury Park savants at Madison Marquette and put together a plan for the whole North End, incorporating the power plant and Carousel building? Why does a stroll through there have to feel like you are touring the set of Mad Max, Beyond Thunderdome, when so many other parts of the area are shaping up? It could be a brilliant park with open spaces and a few residences and businesses.
They better save that North End Pavillion before it falls down from the extreme weight of cheap plastic beach junk from China and Bubble Tea, whatever that is.
The Homestead’s owner Constance Hughes lives locally. You might want to chat with her. Email me for her contact information.
N B Buckman