Current photo of the Quaker Inn. 2021. By Lee Morgan of OG. Note that there is a new owner.
Paul Goldfinger Editor. Blogfinger.net
It wasn’t long after the founding of Ocean Grove in 1869 that the town became famous as a tourist attraction, mostly because of its specialty—-religious tourism. Along with that fame came the railroad and the building of hotels and rooming houses.
It is said that the Quaker Inn, located at #39 Main Avenue at the corner with Central, was built in 1875.
In the History of Ocean Grove dated 1939, by Gibbons, there were 84 hotels listed. The Quaker Inn Hotel was still listed at #39 Main Avenue.
Rich Amole, Blogfinger staff, took an interest in the Inn after finding the 1943 postcard below. Rich is the author of a meticulously researched history of the Shawmont Hotel.
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Paul:
The attachment is a 1943 linen post card of the Quaker Inn. This wonderful card advertises 40 rooms with running water and private bath availability. Complete with a restaurant and soda fountain and two four digit phone numbers; back then the Quaker still maintains it’s 136 years of history pleasing all who come to stay at the corner of Main & Central in Ocean Grove.
Rich Amole. Source: Ebay
Editor’s Note: It’s remarkable how this image from over 70 years ago looks like today’s Quaker Inn.
The image shown above appears in black and white in Ted Bell and Chris Flynn’s book Ocean Grove in Vintage Postcards. They also have a photo (below—with permission) of the restaurant and soda fountain which was a bright and cheerful place seen in the picture above from the outside as the row of windows running along Central Avenue.
Ted and Chris report that the Quaker Inn ads said, “The Perfect Location for a Grove Vacation.”
The caption for the above photo says, “Shown is a partial view of the restaurant and soda fountain at the Quaker Inn. The Quaker style is reflected in the stagecoach wall hangings.”
History/mystery 2021: Recently Ocean Grover Lee Morgan found a page from the Ocean Grove Times dated August 27, 1915. It contains an interesting ad for the Ocean Grove Hotel. That hotel was not mentioned in the 1939 hotel list, but you can see that the address is #39 Main Avenue.
Photo courtesy of Lee Morgan. The Ocean Grove Hotel c 1915
Courtesy of Lee Morgan of Ocean Grove. A later photo. compare to above.
So, as Lee points out, The Quaker Inn is not the historic name for this hotel–It appears to have been the Ocean Grove Hotel. Thanks to Lee Morgan for pointing out this fact.
JULIE LONDON:
There is another unseen layer to the Ocean Grove Hotel photograph. A few years ago I was in a nearby antique store when the owner told me he had just purchased a lot of items from a sale. He said he had briefly looked through one of the boxes which contained glass-plate negatives, some of which he believed were of Ocean Grove.
Indeed, I did find a glass negative of a hotel. I arranged to have it scanned and converted into a jpeg. I then had a print made and framed, hanging it on a wall in my living room, I lived with it for over a year. The whole time I wondered why it looked so familiar.
Curious, I went to the archives of Ocean Grove newspapers located on the Ocean Grove Historical Society’s web site. Thinking that most inns would advertise around the weeks of the Camp Meetings which take place in August, I searched several years from 1910-1920. Landing on the add in the above article and seeing 39 Main. It was instantly clear why the image of the Ocean Grove Hotel looked so familiar as it was, of course, an early iteration of The Quaker Inn. I had to laugh as the facade of the Quaker Inn is iconic in OG.
Lee
Guest rooms are now located where the dining room had been. As for private baths, only a few had them, most were still shared baths when I began staying there in the 1960’s.