A tribute to George Tice: photographer and teacher from NJ. This photo of the Allenhurst water tower is by Paul Goldfinger of Ocean Grove. Click to enlarge. Tice was a world famous photographer who also was a master printer. I studied darkroom techniques with him at the Maine Photographic Workshops.
By Paul Goldfinger, MD. Blogfinger.net. 9/12/25.
Allenhurst is a town of over 400 citizens. It became an independent borough in 1870 when it split from Ocean Township. It is north of Loch Arbor and has the Atlantic Ocean to the east and Deal Lake to the south. It is about 5 minutes north of Ocean Grove as one drives north through Asbury Park.
There is a downtown which has a well known antique center. It has an urban feel, but the area towards the ocean is beautiful. The train stops there and takes residents into New York City.
A looming water tower guards the train tracks. That downtown water tower has fascinated me as a subject for photography, so I have obtained images of it from a variety of angles and locations including from Interlaken across from the Deal Lake extension.
I was there in May where I was photographing it in the rain, and a Allenhurst resident approached me and said that the locals were concerned about the fate of the nearly 100 year old water tower because there are redevelopment plans to transform the entire downtown. She pointed out an osprey nest overhead. And I wrote about why I like to photograph it. (See link below)
Photographing the Allenhurst Water Tower
But there is more to the story now because the Coaster, in a front page piece on 9/11/25, reported that the State of New Jersey has declared the tower eligible for being named to the State and National registers of historic places. This is what the State said,
“After careful consideration, it is our opinion that as Deputy State Historic Preservation Officer of New Jersey that, the Allenhurst Water Tower is eligible to be listed in the New Jersey and National Registers of Historic Places …as a local example of a structure that embodies the distancing characteristics of a property type of a specific period, an ellipsoidal bottom water tank, that exemplifies the evolution of water supply systems during the period from the 1890’s to the 1940’s.”
Hopefully this will save the water tower from the bull dozers.
BILL FRISELL, PAULO MOTIAN, PETRA HADEN, THOMAS MORGAN: “The Windmills of Your Mind.” This song is from the movie The Thomas Crown Affair.