Hazard - Long Branch

This postcard is dated August 30, 1910. Written to a friend in Bridgeport, Connecticut, it relates days of hard work in anticipation of an opening. Most likely it was referring to a theatrical production. Long Branchs cool breezes and prominent visitors attracted many actors from New York and Philadelphia.

On July 19, 1912, Frank Campana wrote a friend in Jersey City that he was enjoying the beach in Long Branch. His return address was listed as 274 First Avenue, Long Branch, New Jersey. That street was located east of Second Avenue. It is no longer there.

In the late afternoon on a summer day, the fashionable thing to do was go strolling or driving along Ocean Avenue. This postcard dated August 27, 1900, was a typical scene in front of Phil Dalys Pennsylvania Club located on the corner of Brighton and Ocean Avenues. The gambling casino took up the south side of the street from Second Avenue to Ocean Avenue.

Three women are walking in front of the West End Hotel. In the 1890s it was not socially acceptable for single women to vacation without a chaperone, and the woman in the middle of the group is probably an older woman hired for the purpose. Located on the west side of Ocean Avenue, just north of Brighton Avenue, the hotel grounds were arranged as an extensive park with many adjoining buildings, including a summer auditorium and a bridge providing guests access to a shaded pavilion overlooking the beach below.

Dated 1907, this postcard shows a delighted group of waders cooling off at the waters edge and the more experienced swimmers venturing into the waves. No matter how far out into the water one went or how hot it was, women were modestly dressed in woolen swimming dresses and men wore woolen bathing suits.

A family enjoying a day at the beach provides a closer look at the bathing attire of the day and the happy faces of the children digging in the sand. Bathing suit styles have changed over the years, but the joy of a child digging in the sand remains the same.

Ocean Avenue is still an unpaved road in this postcard dated June 8, 1909. The scene is looking south with the casino and Ocean Park on the right and the beach and boardwalk on the left. The center of activity along the shore was Ocean Park, a 10-acre park of flower beds and fountains with a bandstand for afternoon concerts. In 1907, a casino and convention hall seating an audience of 3,000 was erected at a cost of $50,000. The old casino, which became the Casino Annex, was the Agricultural Hall at the Centennial Exposition of 1876 in Philadelphia. It was brought to Long Branch in 1877. During World War I, the Casino Annex was used as a Red Cross workroom and encampment for soldiers. In 1919, it became a recreational center for soldiers injured in combat.

Couples are seen taking a walk along the wooden boardwalk. They are headed north and the casino and Ocean Park can be seen behind them. Possibly they have just attended one of the afternoon concerts held there.

In 1885, Ocean Avenue remained an unpaved road, nevertheless a well traveled and much admired one. All of the main streets in the city that headed east ended up on Ocean Avenue. Everything from roads to people gravitated to the ocean and the road that ran past it from north to south. The three men in the photograph seem to be admiring the beautiful homes along the bluff.