From Carl Swenson of OG March, 2019.
Paul: “An old post card of what the North End looked like at one time. Before a hotel and pool it was a tenting area. Only vehicle was a buggy, so it’s not a Sunday shot for sure. Carl”
From Rich Amole who sent us the same postcard last year.
Paul:
This post card image shows a horse drawn delivery cart making rounds to the folks in the tents at the north end of the Grove.
Asbury Park and Wesley Lake at the top of the image would help identify that the section of the Grove that the delivery is being made would appear to be on Spray Avenue right off of Ocean Avenue. Laundry is hanging on lines in the yards behind the tents, and everyone has a wonderful display of those colorful red stripe and blue stripe awnings. Each structure has a chimney.
This scene is from 1906, and within a few short years. this tent neighborhood will be making way for the North End Hotel, turning that tent neighborhood into two outdoor pools and a laundry/maintenance facility for this 256 room complex.
Rich
(Rich Amole is Blogfinger’s staff historian and reporter)
Editor’s note: So which is more historic? Tent City or a commercialized North End?
Don’t let the historic argument sway you. —PG @Blogfinger
BLOSSOM DEARIE (Could it be a surrey and not a cart?—Chicks and ducks and geese better scurry…)
What a wonderful postcard! Happy you posted it again! I can only dream of how peaceful life must have been without tv, cell phones, gadgets, gizmos, cars, parking problems…
Wish I could go back in time for one day, but since I can’t I can just imagine when I look at an old postcard.
Just a thought, but those chimneys were probably for cook stoves rather than heat.
Look -there are CHIMNEYS on the cabin part of each of the tents- I wonder when they stopped allowing them to be heated?
When we lived in Chester, our neighbors across the street were Mr. and Mrs. Horsey. My kids loved to make neighing sounds as we drove by.
I notice when you click on and enlarge that it appears that over in Asbury there are quite a few of the “Surrey’s lined up as if they were earlier versions of Taxi’s.
It was probably no more than a staging area complete with grass plot for the horsey along what I think is Cookman Ave………… Giddy up !
That south to north sidewalk with the stroller on it might have made a handy extension of Ocean Avenue.
I like nick names—I made it up. It seems like it fits because the tents were concentrated in certain areas of the Grove–i.e. into their own communities. As for when they became “Tent City?” It happened this week.—Paul
When did the Tents become “Tent City”? My family goes back three or four generations in the Grove, yet until recently I’ve never heard the “Tents” referred to as “Tent City”.
The expression reminds me of protesters who camp out..
Just curious……