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Palace Amusements
Photo taken 05/14/98 - The Lost Playground © 2001
------ Two blocks in from the Atlantic Ocean, where Cookman Avenue intersects with Kingsley Street in Asbury Park, New Jersey, stands the decaying remains of a magic kingdom. From its start in 1887 as an adult playground, with a reading room and baby-sitters to occupy the kids, the Palace Amusements grew into a palace of dreams. The Ferris wheel soared through the roof, the carousel included 70 animals, four cherubs and two chariots, all hand-carved in the early 1900s. And these, together with the Tilt-a-Wheel and Tunnel of Love, the scooter rides and penny arcades, shaped the memories of seven generations of Jersey youth.
------ Outside, two fun faces painted onto the north wall of the Palace in 1956 served as a beacon, drawing thrill seekers to the Palace from all along the Asbury Park boardwalk. Over time, the nearly identical images with swooping hair dos, Cheshire-cat grins and glowing neon, came to be known as Tillie, and Tillie metamorphosed into Asbury Park's connection to a golden age of seashore amusement parks and to the formative era of Jersey Shore rock 'n' roll.
------ Tillie's ancestry dates to 1897 when an image known as the Steeplechase fun face first appeared at Coney Island. The original of this image was destroyed by the fire of July 28, 1907; as the Park was rebuilt, the face was replaced by an image similar in most aspects to the original. The historian Michael P. Onorato, whose father ran Steeplechase Park from 1928 until the rides were sold off in 1965-66, says "the Steeplechase face changed many times over the years and sometimes there were several faces found throughout the Park. The face became standardized in the late 1940s when all former faces were removed from around the Park and hand-stamps with the several faces were destroyed or disappeared." The final version, glaring out from the glass facade of Steeplechase Park, was used as a symbol on rides, on tickets and as an advertising logo until the 1964 closure and ultimate demolition of Steeplechase Park.
------ The Asbury Park image, painted by a World War II veteran and sign painter Worth Thomas, is related to the Steeplechase face by stylistic similarities, but much more. The name "Tillie" is shorthand for Tilyou, the family name of the father of Coney Island's amusement park, George Cornelius Tilyou. Furthermore, there are strong familial resemblances between Tillie and the photographs of George C. Tilyou and his brother, Edward J. Tilyou, who Onorato believes may have been the model for the final version of the Steeplechase Park image. Almost certainly, whoever designed Tillie intended it to be a sincere form of flattery. The designer took the image as far as possible without upsetting the Tilyous (who were known to threaten legal actions against copycats -- even though the Steeplechase Park image was never protected by a trademark.)
------ Tillie's neon wink and six-foot grin glowed for the last time at 6 p.m. Nov. 27, 1988. Then, without notice, the Palace went dark. And has remained dark ever since, without so much as a dime's worth of upkeep.
------ Nearly a decade later, the Asbury Park Press on July 15, 1998 reported that the Palace "is in danger of collapsing and is expected to be demolished shortly." Quoting city inspectors, the Press said two significant sections of the building had collapsed, including a large portion of the second floor; there were also a number of holes in the roof and two major stress cracks on the exterior.
------Much to our amazement, however, the City of Asbury Park made no attempt to demolish the Palace during the late summer of 1998 or at any time during the coming months. Instead, City officials quietly applied to the State of New Jersey for a loan to cover the cost of demolishing vacant buildings. When Save Tillie learned of the loan application, we protested directly to the City's top officials, who repeatedly assured us that the loan would not be used to pay for demolition of the Palace. The accuracy of these assurances, however, was later called into question; when the loan was approved in late 1999, officials at the State of New Jersey confirmed that the City's application specifically requested money to demolish the Palace.
------ The delay in scheduling demolition, misinformation over the loan, and growing awareness of the threat to the Palace galvanized the campaign. Save Tillie sold T-shirts, conducted a highly successful on-line auction, and was honored at a sold out reception by Kate Mellina and Dave Christopher of Cleopatra Steps Out gallery, 721Cookman Ave., in Asbury Park. To our complete and undying gratitude, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band's rehearsal show in Asbury Park on March 19, 1999 benefited Save Tillie, as did a concert by Joe Grushecky and the House Rockers, John Eddie, and JoBonanno and the Godsons of Soul at the Tradewinds in Sea Bright, N.J. on March 26, 1999.
------ And with more volunteers, more resources, and demolition delayed, Save Tillie turned to the issue which is now at the heart of the campaign: despite a decade of decay and abuse, can the Palace itself be saved with our help? The answer from City engineers was "definitely not." The answer from engineers hired by the Palace owner was "no way." At a meeting during the summer of 1999, a lawyer for the owner even offered Tillie to us immediately if we would first demolish the Palace. That was an offer we could refuse, and did, because the more we looked at the Palace, the more evident it became that despite obvious decay, the Palace isn't as bad as the nay sayers wanted us to believe.
------ The definitive answer came in
April, 2000, when Robert Silman Associates, a New York engineering firm with
a specialty in historic buildings, said that despite obvious and serious
deterioration, the entire Palace can be saved. By then, nearly a thousand
friends of Tillie and the Palace had written letters and signed petitions,
asking City officials to save the Palace. With their support and the inspection
report as a foundation, the campaign is fighting to prevent the use of the
state loan for demolition of the Palace. We have made direct offers to the
owner of the Palace that we will provide for the emergency repairs. We organized
a group of historians, photographers and writers to collaborate on an application
seeking to list the Palace on the New Jersey Register of Historic Palace.
We successfully petitioned the United States Postal Service to approved a
special Tillie pictorial postmark for use at the Asbury Park Festival May
27, 2000, held in conjunction with the reopening of the Stone Pony.
For up-to-date information on the Save Tillie campaign, visit
Save Tillie, Inc.
(Source: http://www.homestead.com/savetillie/Home.html)
