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-- Day Trip - Ocean Grove 


​-  Day Trips -
-- Liberty Park  -- Princeton  -- Lambertville  -- Morristown -- Pinelands  -- Camden -- Wildwoods
-- Cape May  -- Asbury Park  -- Ocean Grove  -- Trenton
​-- Overview      

        A trip to Ocean Grove might be combined with a visit to Asbury Park, its adjacent neighbor to the north, an easy walk on the Ocean Grove boardwalk through the Asbury Park Casino or over the bridge crossing Wesley Lake separating the two communities. On its own, Ocean Grove provides a striking contrast to Asbury Park, offering a more sedate setting than Asbury's more vibrant resort offerings. Both towns were founded just after the Civil War as  part of the Methodist camp meeting movement, but Ocean Grove alone continues to maintain its ties to its religious roots, surviving as the only active camp meeting in the nation. 

       Ocean Grove's Victorian architecture, along with that of Cape May, is considered among the finest examples of the late 19th and early 20th century seaside styles, and in 1976 the town was named to the National Register of Historic Places. Since its founding in 1869, all real estate in Ocean Grove has been owned by the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association, a nonprofit religious organization formed by Methodist ministers to establish a "christian seaside resort" for members of the Methodist Episcopal Church. The Association grants the right to use its land through 99-year renewable leases to tenants who occupy residential, lodging and commercial properties.

       From its founding well into the 20th century, the Association, through its delegated authority from the state to govern and its role as a landlord prescribing conditions in its leases, sought to encourage what it viewed as proper behavior, initially barring card playing and dancing and ensuring that Sunday remained as a day of prayer and reflection--prohibiting bathing, boating, or other amusements. In perhaps its most famous proscription for Sunday, all vehicles, commencing in the 19th century with carriages, and eventually with motor vehicles, had to be removed from all streets from Saturday midnight throughout Sunday, with the gates at the western end of the town, shut with a thick, anchor-like chain. While legally now a part of Neptune Township and most of ts former special self-governing rules removed due to legal challenges, Ocean Grove today retains some practices derived from its church legacy, such as its status as a dry town without sales of alcoholic beverages and a ban on use of its beach on Sunday mornings.  
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Crowd on beach depicted listening to sermon at First Tabernacle built in 1876 in Ocean Grove in drawing published in Harper's Monthly. Image: Wikimedia.org
PictureThornley Chapel, opened on June 30, 1889. Image: NewJerseyAlmanac.com
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         A walk in Ocean Grove might begin in Founder's Park at the small home of the Historical Society of Ocean Grove, which includes historic photos and artifacts and also offers guided tours. The Society also operates its Centennial Cottage, a three-bedroom home built in 1884 and now open to visitors during summer weekends as a living history museum with period furnishings and artifacts. During the summer, the Society offers 90-minute walking tours on Wednesday, Friday and Saturday at $15 for adults and $12 for senior citizens, as well as an annual house tour (virtual in 2021)  for $20.  Just down the block from the Society headquarters, on the corner of Mt Tabor and Pilgrim's Pathway, is Thornley Chapel, built in 1889 as a memorial to Dr. James Thornley, one of the founders of the Camp Meeting Association and the first superintendent of the Ocean Grove Sabbath School, which today hosts a daily meeting for children up to 12 years old and also is a popular wedding site.
- Great Auditorium
  ​       
       Across from the Chapel is ​Ocean Grove's principal structure--its Great Auditorium completed in 1894 constructed by shipbuilders with a steel skeleton overlaid with wooden exterior planks. The Auditorium succeeded smaller structures and the original open-air tabernacles on the beach at which religious services would be held with an audience seated on the sand. Originally able to hold an audience of nearly 10,000, subsequent modifications to add more comfortable seating have reduced its capacity to 6,250. Its acoustics were compared by Leonard Bernstein to those of Carnegie Hall, and the building features an organ with 12,200 pipes, ranking it as the 16th largest  pipe organ in the world (just ahead of the organ in the Mormon Tabernacle in Salt Lake City with 11,623 pipes). Speakers at the Auditorium have included Presidents Grant, Garfield, McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, Taft, Wilson and Nixon, along with W.E.B. Dubois, William Jennings Bryan, Will Rogers, Helen Keller, and Booker T. Washington. Performing artists like Enrico Caruso and Fritz Kreisler also appeared and, more recently, popular singers such as Johnny Mathis, Kenny Loggins, Judy Collins and Tony Bennett have given concerts. The Auditorium also hosts Sunday religious services, an annual choir festival, and a series of speakers and special events. ​
Great Auditorium in Ocean Grove
Great Auditorium. Image: NewJerseyAlmanac.com
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Interior of Great Auditorium. Image: Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association
- Tent Colony
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       Another legacy from Ocean Grove's founding is the line of tents adjacent to the Auditorium, which once were over 600 but now number 114; they are rented to those who have inherited the right to rent or have been selected from a years-long waiting list. The tents include functioning kitchens and bathrooms with electrical power and running water, and an annual tour to view the interiors of selected tents is sponsored by the Historical Society.
​*  Tent City: Life in Ocean Grove's one-of-a-kind community - but no barbecues or dogs, please, 7/15/2013, NJ.com
*  Ocean Grove Tent Colony Panorama, 360Cities.net
Tents near Great Auditorium, which currently number 114, down from a peak of over 600. Image: NewJerseyAlmanac.com 
Pilgrim PathwayOcean Pathway homes and inns. Image: NewJerseyAlmanac.com

- Ocean Pathway
     
​       The Auditorium and tents are at the head of Ocean Pathway, a broad avenue with a grass center aligned on each side by with large Victorian hotels, inns and homes that runs from the Auditorium to the boardwalk. The Pathway is the site of  such events as the spring and fall annual flea markets and crafts and art festivals.

       Ocean Grove's boardwalk has a pavilion which is the site of Worship in the Grove religious services on Sunday mornings from late May through late September (see below for past controversy over its  use as a wedding venue), but is otherwise devoid of amusements or food options (since a fire in 2019 destroyed a small restaurant complex at its northern end near the entrance to the Asbury Park Casino).  . 

- Shopping

*  Favorite Things (Boutique furniture, home decor & accessories)
*  Main Avenue Galleria (Fine art, crafts, jewelry,  framing, art supplies, art classes)
*  Ocean Grove Trading Co. (Contemporary women's clothing, shoes, jewelry)
​*  Ocean Grove Area Chamber of Commerce

- Dining & Food 
    
Note that Ocean Grove remains a dry town prohibiting the sale of alcohol, but restaurants permit BYOB and liquor and wine package stores are located nearby in Bradley Beach and Asbury Park. Restaurants serving alcohol  in Asbury Park walkable from Ocean Grove include Moonstruck (originally founded 1995 in Ocean Grove, relocated 2002 in order to obtain liquor license) and Asbury Festhalle & Biergarten.
​
*  SeaGrass Resturant (local seafood, shellfish, steaks and chops, dinner entrees $26 to $33, BYOB, Certificate of Excellence, 4.5 of 5 stars, TripAdviser.com) 
*  Day's Ice Cream (founded 1876, oldest continuously operating business in Ocean Grove, located on Pitman Avenue at Founders Park, open May thru October)
*  Starving Artist at Days (separately owned, managed breakfast and lunch restaurant in front of Days Ice Cream offers omelettes, sandwiches, wraps, fried seafood, hot dogs, burgers) 
*  Bia, a European Bistro (located in 16-room Majestic Hotel on Main Avenue, dinner entrees $26 to $37, hosts private events, such as weddings, throughout  year. but restaurant only open to public from Memorial Day through September, BYOB).
* High Tide Tea Co. (over 60 varieties of international teas, baked goods and pastries, located on Pilgrim Pathway)

- Events
​*  Ocean Grove Chamber of Commerce
*  Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association 
*  Historical Society of Ocean Grove
PictureBoardwalk and North End Hotel in 1916 postcard. The hotel, which opened in 1911 as the town's most elegant lodging with fifty suites with private baths, a telephone in every room, a swimming pool, four bowling alleys, a dining room, a carousel, and a motion picture hall, was demolished in 1980. Image: Wikimedia Commons

​

- Ocean Grove History

       Ocean Grove was founded in 1869 by the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association,  a nonprofit religious organization formed by Methodist ministers to "provide opportunities for spiritual birth, growth, and renewal in a Christian seaside setting." In the year after the Association acquired 260 acres of oceanfront land which would become Ocean Grove, the New Jersey legislature granted a charter for the town "as a place of perpetual worship to Jesus Christ" and subsequently granted authority to govern and police the community. In addition to its delegated governing authority under state law, the Association retained the ownership of all real estate, granting 99-year renewable leases for its use and thus able to enforce rules on its tenants to ensure Christian behavior by prohibiting such activities as dancing, card-playing, and the sale of liquor. On Sundays, no bathing, boating, or other amusements were allowed and all carriages were barred from either being driven or parked on streets within the town.        

        Camp meetings, which also were held on the western frontier,  began as temporary locations for the faithful to gather for prayer, the singing of hymns and to hear leading preachers. Over time, some meetings like that at Ocean Grove grew from clusters of temporary tents to communities with more permanent structures.

        Ocean Grove's popularity grew, and by b​y 1900 it had more than 1,000 cottages and nearly 80 hotels. To accommodate its residents and visitors, the Association secured authority under state legislation to build streets and sewers, establish a police force and local court,  license businesses and perform other governmental functions. Ocean Grove's Victorian architecture, along with that of Cape May, is considered among the finest examples of the late 19th and early 20th century styles. In 1975 and 1976, respectively, Ocean Grove was placed on the New Jersey and National Registers of Historic Places based on its significance as an important and intact example of 19th century urban planning and its unique aggregation of historic architecture in late 19th and early 20th century seaside  architecture styles.
​
      In contrast to its adjacent neighbor Asbury Park, which was also founded as a Methodist community, for much of its history Ocean Grove maintained strong ties to its religious roots. As Asbury Park evolved as a more secular resort, occasional tensions arose. Railroad service, for example, was extended from Long Branch into Asbury Park in 1875 at a new station built on land donated by the Camp Meeting Association with the new depot serving both Asbury Park and Ocean Grove, but with the railroad complying with the Association's request that .trains could not stop within the city of Asbury Park on Sundays. As demand increased, however, the railroad secured--over the objection of the Association--approval by the state utilities commission in 1911 to provide Sunday service stopping at the downtown Asbury station. 
*  Asbury Park at Last Wins Fight for Sunday Trains, 10/11/1911, Asbury Park Press, Newspapers.com

       Perhaps the most visible faith-based rule prohibited the parking or driving of motor vehicles on Sundays--enforced by hanging a thick anchor-like chain at midnight Saturday across the road between the entrance gates--effectively returning  the streets of Ocean Grove to their appearance in the nineteenth century. That prohibition, which also had first been imposed on horse-drawn carriages, remained in place until 1977, when a local newspaper delivery service--after failing to gain the Association's approval of a compromise to allow an exception for trucks to deliver Sunday newspapers during the early post-midnight hours for sale--successfully sued and obtained a ruling by the New Jersey Supreme Court that the Association's regulation as applied to newspaper deliveries was unconstitutional in its violation of freedom of the press, but otherwise did not invalidate the Association's other rules governing the community. Schaad v. Ocean Grove Camp Meeting, 77 NJ 237 (1977).

       Two years later, however, the state Supreme Court considered more directly Ocean Grove's status to govern itself conferred by state statute, holding that the state law allowing creation by the Association of its own municipal court and police force was unconstitutional in violating the separation between church and state. In its opinion voiding a conviction for drunk driving by the Ocean Grove court, the Supreme Court stated that the Association, as a body controlled by a specific religious faith in its membership and mission "can be delegated neither the power to manage public highways or other public property, the power to make laws, nor the power to enforce Board rules..." State v. Celmer, 80 NJ 405 (1979). That decision was followed by an agreement reached in 1981 between the Association and Neptune Township to have the Township assume the police and judicial powers previously exercised by the Association, but which allowed the Association to continue its role as a landlord enforcing rights pursuant to leases with its tenants. 

       A more recent confrontation with the Association occurred when it attempted to refuse rental of its boardwalk pavilion for a gay couple's civil union in 2007 (before the legalization of gay marriage)--despite promoting wedding rentals of the pavilion for heterosexual couples, an action which was later held by judicial decisions in 2012 to violate state anti-discrimination laws. After the adverse rulings, the Association terminated the rental program at its pavilion for all wedding ceremonies of either heterosexual or gay couples. While other legal challenges have eroded most of the formal efforts to enforce religion-based rules, Ocean Grove continues today with some practices inherited from its church affiliation, such as keeping its beach closed on Sunday mornings and discouraging festivals or other non-religious events on Sunday. 
​*  Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association broke state’s discrimination law when it denied use of its pavilion for couple’s civil union ceremony, 1/13/2012, ACLU-NJ.org  
*  Ocean Grove Tries to Retain Ideals, But Not Some Civic Burdens, 8/22/1982, NY Times
*  Tracing a Jersey shore town's spiritual history, 7/15/2015, Curbed.com
*  Hey, who knew? History of Ocean Grove, God’s Square Mile, 10/22/2015, app.com

        Despite the conflict over the use of the pavilion, Ocean Grove has benefited from a renewal of its business and housing stock through its attraction to the gay and lesbian community which began in the late 1990s. That interest, which initially raised tensions with older community leaders and residents, saw the opening of a large number of gay-owned restaurants, hotels, and stores, along with the needed renovation of aging housing. 
*  Historical Society of Ocean Grove
​*  History of Ocean Grove, Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association
*  Ocean Grove, NeptuneTownship.org ​
​*  Ocean Grove Area Chamber of Commerce
*  Ocean Grove, howeverthen.com

​-  Day Trips -
-- Liberty Park  -- Princeton  -- Lambertville  -- Morristown
​-- Pinelands  -- Camden -- Wildwoods
-- Cape May  -- Asbury Park  -- Ocean Grove  -- Trenton
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Home in Ocean Grove. Image: NewJerseyAlmanac.com
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Nagle's Apothecary 100-year-old ice cream and sandwich counter is temporarily closed during 2019-22 due to a family illness and Covid-19 pandemic. Image: NewJerseyAlmanac.com
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Ocean Grove beach. Image: NewJerseyAlmanac.com