SHARK RIVER HILLS: A MOMENT IN TIME

Although people have been living in what is now Shark River Hills since Precolumbian times, its modern era dates back to July 8, 1923, the day that property in this shiny new resort area went on sale. The Shark River Hills Company had actually purchased and platted the 728 acre tract several years earlier, but initial attempts at development had faltered. Now the Company had placed its renewed hopes in the capable hands of Morrisey & Walker, Realtors. The realtors quickly proceeded to live up to their reputation for aggressive marketing, splashing a large ad in the Asbury Park Press on July 7 that proclaimed Shark River Hills to be nothing less than “the LAST HIGH-GRADE DEVELOPMENT NEAR ASBURY.” Parcels could be had for as little as $95, or $10 down and $10/month. 

Asbury Park Press, July 7, 1923

Promotional fan, featuring the "Shark River Hills girl"

The pitch was primarily aimed at the summer crowd, who were lured by a vision of a vacation paradise and assured that building “YOUR bungalow on YOUR lot” was a better investment than a series of summer rentals. But those who wished to make Shark River Hills their “permanent house” were welcome as well, so long as their money was green.

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"Uppie" Updegraff (Neptune Historical Museum)

A driving force behind this sales campaign was Alice “Uppie” Updegraff, the doyenne of Jersey Shore realtors. For years she commuted from her home in Matawan to her job at Morrisey & Walker in Asbury Park, but in 1924 she decided to set an example for her potential customers by buying - not just any house, but the oldest home in Shark River Hills, built in around 1913, a charming bungalow on Riverside Drive to which a garage was later added. The house appeared in many ads for Shark River Hills property. (Later still, the house was moved to its current location on Glenmere Avenue.)

I knew Uppie from practically the day I was born and have several pictures from a photoshoot on her lawn when I was 4 1/2 months old - me with my parents, me with Uppie's cat - all with her famous house looming in the background, blurred but visible. I suspect Uppie counted my mom and dad as being among a few hundred of her closest friends. More than once I heard the story of her comment when she first saw me as a baby: “Lots of head above the ears - just like her father.” I don’t give her much credit for phrenology; but for finding a way to admire a baby and flatter the baby's father at the same time, she definitely deserved the Dale Carnegie award for knowing how to win friends and influence new parents.

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Uppie's home at 645 S Riverside Drive, the first home built in Shark River Hills

"Lots of head above the ears?" Uppie's home can be seen in the background

I remember Uppie as a tiny, wizened old lady though at the time she was probably about the same age as I am now. Living with her in the bungalow were her willowy daughter Virginia - also a real estate agent - and Virginia’s husband, the splendidly mustachioed Alphonse Tonietti. 

I always found Alphonse a bit of an enigma, but with the help of my friend Joyce, who has a better memory than I do for these details, and my cousin Alan, who is a better scholar than I am, I've pieced together most of his story. Alphonse was born in 1896 in Basrah (then part of the Ottoman Empire), attended the American College in Beirut, Lebanon, and arrived in the US in 1921, where he graduated from the Columbia University School of Journalism. He went on to have what seems to have been a fairly distinguished career, working as editor of the Literary Digest Magazine and serving on the staffs of the New York World-Telegram and the New York Sun.

Then, in the mid-1930s, Alphonse achieved a measure of possibly unwanted fame when he was fired by the Italian language newspaper Il Progresso, followed by a lawsuit that was widely reported in the Communist and liberal press. Amazingly, he won his case and was reinstated with seven weeks' back pay, the Court finding that he had been discharged not because (as Il Progresso claimed) he didn't write in Italian - that had never been a requirement of his position as editor of the American page - but because of his activities as Chair of Il Progresso's chapter of the New York Newspaper Guild.

​By the time I knew him, he had moved on to become the owner and operator of the Holy Land Art Company in New York City, a manufacturer of religious artifacts and fabrics. He died in his office on Murray Street in June of 1958, at the age of 61. Virginia Tonietti lived on for another thirty years; she never remarried.

Two details of more than passing interest are missing here - why Alphonse abandoned his journalism career in favor of selling religious objects; and even more intriguing, how on earth he managed to meet an all-American girl from the tiny hamlet of Shark River Hills, New Jersey and persuade her, in October of 1931, to become his bride.

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When my parents decided to give up their rental unit on Clinton Place to buy a home of their own in 1947 or 1948, Uppie and Virginia were close at hand to shepherd them through the process. The house they chose was a modest bungalow on Pinewood Drive at the corner of Hampton Court. It seemed baronial to me at the time although it is currently listed on Zillow as being 1879 square ft, a number that includes two large porches that have now been enclosed and a substantial addition. So - a not-so-big house back then. According to Zillow it was built in 1908.

But wait! Wasn’t Uppie’s house, built in around 1913, supposed to be the oldest house in Shark River Hills? Surely Zillow had gotten the date of the Stodola home wrong.

When I visited Shark River Hills this past August, I had a chance to chat with the current owner of the house, who confirmed that yes, indeed, the house was built in 1908 - that's the date shown on the deed. When I observed that the date seemed too early by several years, he told me that the daughter of the previous owner, the one who had bought the home from my parents, had informed him that the house was originally built not as a residence but as a retreat for Roman Catholic priests, on land purchased by the sister of one of the priests. In fact, he said, the house featured two small prayer rooms, one in the basement, the other a second floor enclosure barely larger than a closet that my father had used as his ham shack!

So far my efforts to track down the previous owner’s daughter or to find any corroboration of the house’s supposed history as a Catholic retreat have failed. If anyone reading this blog can provide me with information about the history of my childhood home I would be very grateful.

Pinewood Drive and Hampton Court - summertime

Pinewood Drive and Hampton Court - winter scene

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Although Uppie and others made it their full time home, Shark River Hills remained largely a resort community for quite awhile. Relics of this history were all around when I was a child; across the street from us on Hampton Court was a log cabin (still there!) that was shuttered most of the year, and our closest neighbor was a tiny cottage only occupied during the summer months. Shark River Hills even had its own boardwalk, running from the Club House to the Tucker's Point Bridge, which had doubled the number of routes between Neptune City and Shark River Hills when it was completed in 1923.

The Shark River Hills boardwalk (Neptune Historical Museum)

Crowds gathered on the boardwalk to watch a sporting event (Neptune Historical Museum)

But the little subdivision was on the verge of a sea change. As our friend and neighbor Mary Jane Evers put it, Shark River Hills in the early 1940s was “a summer development, [with] homes not equipped for year-round living, and about three macadamed roads which the Army had done to get to their own properties in the Hills and to allow the personnel to get to work.”  My parents' circle of friends were recent arrivals, just as we were, and they were all full timers. 

As usual, Mary Jane had it just right, even if there’s no precise demographic term for an old-timey summer resort proceeding peaceably along its journey toward year-round development when it suddenly finds itself host to an Army base and under pressure to make itself user-friendly for a large infusion of military and associated civilian personnel. My father was part of that Camp Evans infusion, and so it happened that this oddly unique moment in the history of Shark River Hills formed the backdrop for my childhood.

The “great hurricane of 1944” demolished the old boardwalk, and no one bothered to rebuild it. The era of Shark River Hills as a summer resort had come to an end. 

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To all my loyal readers: A very happy Thanksgiving from my family to yours.

Front row: my dad, Aunt June and Uncle Syd (Dad's brother); Back row: my mom holding my sister Sherry, my sister Leslie, me, my grandparents Edwin and Beatrice Stodola