Driving South to Margate
I took a little bit of time to explore some of the Atlantic Ocean Coast including Lucy the Elephant. I went south toward Atlantic City and spent some time realizing that there are parts of it that are fairly dumpy. My goal today was to drive to a small town called Margate New Jersey to see a bit of an oddball roadside attraction. When I travel I like to go do the things that not everyone does. I am the kind of guy that will stop to see the world’s largest ball of barbed wire or some stupid thing like that.
It was with that mentality that I want to visit this 6 story elephant building and I had to go explore and find out more.
Little Egg Harbor
On the way to Margate, I went through a small town called Little Egg Harbor. Yep, if you are a boater, you recognize the name because this is where “Egg Harbor” yachts used to be located back in its heyday. They built large fishing “convertibles” and other boats as well. We have friends that have one and they are sturdy boats for sure.
Sea Village Marina
As I was driving I saw to the right a bunch of what looked like floating homes sitting on land. They were not even all on blocks, they were leaning this way and that. I am not talking about houseboats, but I think that is what they are officially called. I am referring to the “sleepless in Seattle” style homes. Well, I spun the car around to check it out further and the gates were open so I slowly drove in. This had been clearly abandoned. Windows were broke in these homes and there were seagulls and birds sitting in the broken window sills.
Storm damage on Jersey Coast
As I walked around these homes in the parking lot, It occurs to me these were a represetative of broken dreams and financial impacts. Someone owned each of these and it was odd that they were all just sitting here like this. I then looked over behind me and saw a wooden bulkhead at the end of the parking lot. I walk over to it and am shocked at what I see. The picture you see here was the view of what it looked like out there. These were homes that used to be an entire community on the water. They were in varying degrees of sunk. You could see where there was still furniture in them, windows open with wet beds inside. furniture that could be seen through the windows. It was horribly depressing and I decided I would have to lookup more information about them later.
Broken Dreams
It turns out this was all damage from Hurricane Sandy. The people that owned homes here in the Sea Village Marina were not allowed to go back to their homes until it was deemed safe.
Held hostage by bureaucracy
The marina essentially went out of business. It has changed hands a number of times. The homeowners have been through court battle after court battle to get permission to go back to their homes to survey the damage and file claims and decide what is next. The challenge for these homeowners is that this was the ONLY floating home marina in New Jersey and it isn’t like they can just drive their boat out of this marina to another one.
It was actually a very sad thing to see. I stood there on this bulkhead looking at these 40+ homes I could see in the water and then the other 25+ that were sitting on land and just felt so saddened for them. I think about the average family that saves up a bunch of money to buy a second home or a summer place and then something like this can happen. Sadly it seems that all these years later, these homeowners are still in limbo.
Heading to see Lucy the Elephant
I also went over to a small town just south of Atlantic City called Margate. They have an odd roadside attraction that was built in the 1890s as a marketing ploy for a land development project. That sounds cool but the reality is that back then, there weren’t really cars or trains that came this far south in New Jersey. So basically people wanting the property in this area would have to walk about 6 miles to this attraction. Crazy, right
Saltwater is hard on structures
Over the years that certainly changed and this was part of the South Jersey shoreline and saw a lot of people coming to visit Lucy. She was made of wood originally and required the upkeep that made her quite a bit of work
The years of salt water, storms, and the air had taken its toll and in the 1970s a group formed to save and restore Lucy the elephant. They were able to secure a location a couple of blocks away to keep her which is her current home. Think about this effort. As you can imagine it was Quite a move as there are not a lot of contractors that have experience moving a 6 story wooden elephant. Once Lucy was secure on her foundation, the renovation work began. The Save the Lucy foundation was responsible for raising money for this effort. It was quite interesting to look at her and her construction from the inside. The construction of Lucy is a lot like a wooden boat.
Going inside of the Elephant
I scheduled my tour and paid my small admission fee. It was just me and one other family on the tour so had a very personal experience with the tour guide. He was very knowledgeable and answered all questions about the attraction.
Once you go into a door in the rear leg, you walk up a spiral staircase to a beautiful wood-floored room with detailed handrails and portholes. It looked like it would be great for a small reception. I thought of a small wedding for a clearly unique experience. The tour guide did confirm, when I asked, that they have held several weddings in Lucy over the years. What is interesting is from the main room you can see, but not go into, several doors that were small rooms and closets off the side of the main floor. Lucy was a summer home for a short period of time in her history and you can see the small bathroom, with claw foot tub and all.
The Eye to the Atlantic
The steps you see all the way in the far side of this picture leads up into the elephants head and what is interesting is that you can look out either of the “eyes” which are portholes that look out right toward the Atlantic Ocean.
Climbing Lucy the Elephant’s Ribs
In the photo of the inside of Lucy, you see two small staircases leading up to a platform up a few feet above the general floor. When you go up onto that platform, there is a door that goes to another set of steps that go up to the roof (or back) of Lucy. The staircase is fairly narrow and goes between the main body room of Lucy and the external rounded shape of her body. As you come out of the staircase, you step out onto the large “basket” that is on Lucy’s back. This is a large area with room to hold a couple of dozen people easily. The view from up here is great seeing most of the South Atlantic coastline. In one direction, you can see right out into the Atlantic Ocean.
Recommended Visit for sure
My tour ended by descending the staircase from Lucy’s back, down into the main floor and down the staircase in the rear of Lucy to descend into her back leg. Down the spiral staircase in the other leg allows you to depart from Lucy back on the ground level. The view as you walk from the main room toward the read staircase is pretty neat. The room, as you saw above, is well-appointed and looks pretty cool, but looking “aft” you can see out a window that looks toward the west. Once out, I looked back and lucy and realized window looked right out of Lucy big ole’ elephant but. I couldn’t help but think, “That is one Big Ass Window.”
She is now open for visits and tours. I would recommend going to see this attraction, it is different, kind of interesting and if you are a boating person, you will see the similarities between wooden boat building and the structure on the inside. Even dating back to the late 1800’s, the technology and method of building wooden uniquely curved structures haven’t changed in over 100 years.
If you want to see some of this information in video form, feel free to watch it here. The first half of this particular episode was all about Lucy and touring her.
Free Stuff
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Tools and supplies
Tools and supplies we use regularly can be found here:
- Jet Band Saw
- Sanding Tape 120 Grit – 1 inch wide
- Sanding Tape for Spindles (220 Grit)
- Small Sanding Cord for Spindles (150 Grit)
- Screwdriver with nut ends
- Pry Bar Set
- Oscillating Multi-tool (about $35)
- The Best small wood cutting blades
- Great “plunge cutter”
- ABSOLUTE Best metal cutting blade (for cutting bolts, etc.)
- Safety Glasses
- xActo Blade Knife
- Ryobi Variable Speed Jigsaw
Video and Camera Equipment we use
Video equipment used is: Canon Vixia G40
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