4th of July, Asbury Park

by Daniel Wolff

  The one modern building on this end of Springwood is St. Stephen's AME Zion Church. After it became clear that the city's redevelopment was going to focus on the beachfront, St. Stephen's came forward with its own plan for the West Side. The African American church proposed ninety-eight garden apartments and town houses, a seven-story senior-citizen building, and a revitalized business district along Springwood Avenue. It formed a not-for-profit that secured $5.5 million in federal and state funding. But for the project to have a chance, the city council had to agree to the kind of tax abatements it would offer Carabetta. Instead, in 1976, the council vetoed the local, black-run project, declaring that it would be better to wait for private builders. The head of St. Stephen's development corporation said the decision smacked of Asbury's "hidden agendas."

  By 1981, neglect of the West Side was so severe that a study found it necessary to state, "The area is still part of the city. It will not vanish nor will its problems." Asbury was still hoping for "private money to move things along." That's how one councilman put it, inadvertently summing up the paralysis in one revealing sentence: "The city can't do anything, but we're willing to do what we can."

  Another decade passed. Finally, the city sold seventy-two West Side lots to a developer called Philip Konvitz. He put down ten percent of the $750,000 purchase price and agreed to build affordable housing along Springwood. In the next ten years, he completed only fifteen houses and sold only seven. You can see them just past St. Stephen's: a handful of two-story suburban town houses surrounded by abandoned lots. Konvitz claimed the problem was state money that never came through. In the meantime, the weeds grew taller, and none of the city managers, starting with Addeo, or the redevelopment lawyers, or the various city councils were willing to confront the developer.

  Konvitz had become the most recent in the string of Asbury Park power brokers. Born on the Fourth of July, 1912, in Zefat (now Israel), he became a bail bondsman in Newark— thanks, he says, to the Mob. "In my business," he explains, "I knew everybody. I knew the good guys, I knew the bad guys." His International Fidelity grew into a $100 million operation licensed in fifty states and Puerto Rico. He invested in Jersey shore real estate that was eventually worth more than $20 million. For years, Konvitz held court in a trailer parked outside a Neptune shopping center. There, dressed in a 1940s-style summer suit with suspenders and an old-fashioned straw boater, he received a daily line of people looking for his legendary no-interest loans. According to his close friend ex-police chief, ex-mayor, state assemblyman Thomas Smith, the loans didn't create political influence. They went to "non-descript people."

  When Henry Vaccaro went bankrupt in Asbury's waterfront development deal, it was Konvitz who loaned him $100,000 to save his house from a sheriffs sale— and then invested $200,000 in Vaccaro's guitar business. And council members got loans, too. One was given $ 35,000— unsecured and with no interest— to open a bar on Asbury's waterfront. Four months later, this councilman introduced a resolution that let Konvitz sell eighteen of the untouched and unpaid-for Springwood lots to another developer. The resolution passed 4-0. "[Council members] respect my opinion," Konvitz said. "I don't try to influence anybody."

  In July 2000, when Asbury's council proposed that a state authority come in and monitor beachfront redevelopment, the resolution called for the chairman of the authority to be a local citizen: someone known for his "business acumen, political savvy, and . . . negotiating ability." The name that came up was that of eighty-eight-year-old Philip Konvitz. At a subsequent closed-door meeting about the appointment, a Superior Court judge declared, "There is one person who controls Asbury Park." The local paper reported that the judge "clearly was referring to Konvitz." The names changed— Konvitz assumed the role of Clarence Hetrick or, before that, of James Bradley— but the perception remained the same: that Asbury was run and could only be run from the top down. The same way the economy had to flow from the beachfront inland.

  This Fourth of July, the only sign that Springwood Avenue has anything to do with a beachfront is a lone seagull wheeling above the empty lots. Off in the distance, sirens sound like ghosts of the riot police. It's the Ocean Grove parade drawing to a close. On Atkins, five blocks west of the tracks, there's a one-story building with MUSIC BAR ENTERTAINMENT written over its closed, black door. This is what's left of Springwood's music scene. On this corner, Bill Basie must have played stride piano; Davey Sancious must have searched for that lost jazz chord. This is where Donald Hammary heard the ditta-da-ditta-da of glass bottles thrown from rooftops.

  North, on Borden Avenue, tired wooden houses teeter on old foundations. Here's a new, half-finished place, construction materials rusting and melting in the weather. Next to it is the Shiloh Unified Holy Church. Near that, a couple of shotgun houses: two rooms wide by two deep with a narrow hall running down the center. They look at the same time decrepit and ancestral: the architecture of the Deep South brought here by hotel porters and chambermaids. The yards are cluttered with broken plastic toys. Old men sit out front in folding chairs. Families gather around Fourth of July barbecues, joke with each other while the coals heat up.

  At Mattison Avenue, some kids are playing in a quiet playground; the chains creak on the swings. East is the Asbury Middle School, and on Bangs Avenue, the Faith Baptist Tabernacle, built in 1923, back when the Klan was marching. Past Prospect, the street is as tree-lined as a country road. Old maples three stories high shade frame houses. For every abandoned lot or front yard spilling with black garbage bags, there's a property that's been carefully planted, its walkway swept, its iron fencing tipped and painted. In front of one house, a gray-haired black lady clips the hedge. She looks to be in her eighties, wearing a blue-and-white summer dress, her home whitewashed till it sparkles, blue hydrangea blooming beside her.

  You can see the future from here.

  Back across the tracks, past the dead space, by the shore, kids will soon be building sand castles. A half hour from now, over on Ocean Avenue, the black man who went cursing down the beach will be packing up his car. "They wanted us to buy a four-dollar badge," he'll tell a friend. "But I said I'd leave first. We got done what we needed to get done."

  Two months from now— after the attack on the World Trade Towers— Springsteen will appear on a nationally televised " September 11 Telethon," singing a new song about Asbury Park, his first in years. "My City of Ruins" talks about "Young men on the corner like scattered leaves / The boarded up windows, the empty streets." It ends with a call to "rise up," as Springsteen once again uses Asbury to reflect the state of the nation.

  Even before it's in office, a new city council will start working out a deal where a new developer agrees to buy Carabetta's rights and commit to the old formula of high-end condos on the beach. Included will be what one planning consultant describes as a "rock'n'roll entertainment Mecca." In twenty-first-century language, the plan is to make Asbury "a destination location" reborn through "the economic momentum [of] gentrification." Facing a $4 million budget deficit and a state takeover of city finances, with its property value still dropping, the city will resell its beachfront.

  Of the three thousand proposed new units, five percent will be labeled affordable ($100,000 and up). The developer will commit to donating funds toward improving the West Side. But hope for most of the current citizens will depend on a familiar theory: money from what one council member calls "the new Asbury Park" is supposed to float the rest. How will this wave of gentrification affect the thirty percent of Asbury's population living in poverty? When a local minister asks, the city manager who structured the redevelopment deal answers: the law requires housing be found for the dispossessed, "but not necessarily in the same area."

  Moments after the final planning session for the new Asbury, that city manager will be forced to resign, accused of taking bribes on another matter in another town. The man offering the bribes will be identified as Philip Konvitz. But the waterfront plan will continue to move forward, the new city mana
ger saying— with no apparent irony— that "the people of Asbury Park have been dying for this."

  In June of 2004, preservationists will saw Tillie's face out of the wall of the Palace and place it in storage. Then the old amusement park will be demolished. And that Fourth of July, with the city still waiting for reconstruction to begin, Asbury's first Independence Day parade in years will march down Main Street. Bands will play; fireworks will go off that night. "It shows we're back," one resident will say. Another will call it "emblematic."

  But all this is in the future. Here on Bangs Avenue, on a shady block, hope makes a different sound. An old woman in a blue-and-white summer dress is working in her garden. As she works, she hums a tune almost too soft to hear.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Many people have made this book possible, some of whom I will forget to thank. All errors and opinions are mine.

  First, thanks for all their help to the staff of the Asbury Park Library, including Dorothy Booker, Charlene Jordan, Joan Lager, Patricia LaSala, Lauren Loudermilk, Malakia Oglesby, Robert Stewart, and Wanda Wyckoff.

  And then there is the inexhaustible source of Asbury information, Ellis Gilliam.

  Among the many people kind enough to share their memories and insights, I want to thank Donald Hammary, Gregory Holland, Delores Holmes, Kate Mellina, Norman Mesnikoff, Paul Onto, the Rev. David J. Parreott Jr., David Sancious, Thomas Smith, Garry Tallent, Steven Van Zandt, and Carl Williams.

  For his continuing role as teacher and friend, Dave Marsh.

  For his enormous generosity, Bruce Springsteen.

  For their enthusiasm and support over too many years, Sandy Choron, Jonathan Demme, Jim and Kath Desmond, Rusty Ped- ersen, Janey Tannenbaum, Bobby Vergara, Frank Wilkinson, and Wendy Wolf.

  For their help on the final leg, Bloomsbury's Karen Rinaldi, Panio Gianopoulos, Amanda Katz, and Greg Villepique.

  Finally, thanks to my families: Ma, Pa, and the sisters, the great Marta Renzi and her equally great sons, Amos and Lorenzo.

  NOTES

  FOURTH OF JULY, 1870

  5 For Bradley's version of the founding See his "History of Asbury Park, "The Shore Press, May 21, 1885. Hereafter, "Bradley history."

  6 Jersey wagon Harold F. Wilson, The Story of the Jersey Shore (Princeton, NJ: D. Van Nostrand Co., Inc., 1964) 20. Hereafter, "Wilson 1." "Born on Valentine's Day" For a history of Bradley's childhood and early business career, see the front-page obituary, Asbury Park Press, June 7, 1921 (hereafter, "Bradley obit"); also James A. Bradley and Asbury Park: A Biography and History, pamphlet at Asbury Park Library, published under the auspices of the Bradley Memorial Committee, 1921. Hereafter, "Bradley bio."

  7 probably from drink Harold F. Wilson, The Jersey Shore: A Social and Economic History of the Counties of Atlantic, Cape May, Monmouth, and Ocean (New York: Lewis Historical Publishing Co., Inc., 1953), 510. Hereafter, "Wilson 2." for 1837 panic and description of the Bowery Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace, Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 612-59.

  8 minstrel show Ibid., 643. hard, hot work See "How Brushes Are Made," Manufacturer and Builder 23, no. 12 (December 1891).

  9 "distinctively middle-class creed" Burrows and Wallace, Gotham, 976. Helen Packard See Helen M. Bradley obituary, Asbury Park Evening Press, February 15, 1915, 1. a visitor Daily Journal, July 16, 1885. 1857 panic Burrows and Wallace, Gotham, 844-50.

  10 Civil War Ibid., 874-77.

  11 Henry Ward Beecher Ibid., 976.

  12 Josh Billings See www.boondocksnet.com/twaintexts/pattee02_g.html . "strangely warmed" William Warren Sweet, Methodism in American History (New York: Abingdon Press, 1933; 1954), 35.

  "One

  condition" Ibid., 42.

  13 "Wither am I going?" Ibid., 64.

  Methodist membership Ibid., 120.

  Love feasts Ibid., 40.

  "bathed in tears" Ibid., 76.

  "the surf blends" Wilson 1, 46.

  14 population Wilson 2, 466.

  "the favo

  rite watering place" New York Times, July 13, 1870.

  Bradley's wild w

  oods See Bradley history.

  15 "religious application" Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe (New York: Dell, 1982).

  "The great world" Dr. E. H. Stokes, The Story of Ocean Grove: An Historical Sketch (1919), www.oceangrove.org/history2.htm.

  16 Spanish silver dollar Gustav Kobbe', The New Jersey Coast and Pines: An Illustrated Guide-Book (With Road Maps) (New York: Walking News Inc., 1982), 48. First published 1889.

  preamble

  See "Ocean Grove: Growth of A Great Religious Summer Resort," New York Daily Tribune, August 2, 1890.

  early guid

  ebook Kobbe', New Jersey Coast.

  17 "Bless de Lord!" Asbury Park Journal, December 10, 1887.

  "worldly de

  lights" Richard M. Cameron, Methodisim and Society in Historical Perspective (New York: Abingdon Press, 1961), 218.

  "tendency to worldliness" Ibid., 219.

  dancing Ibid., 222.

  "the practice of the sexes" Kobbe', New Jersey Coast, 51.

  "autocratic" Wilson 2, 80.

  1871 Matthew Simpson, A Hundred Years of Methodism (New York:

  Phillip

  s and Hunt, 1876), 195.

  18 "He holds the honest people" Matthew Josephson, The Robber Barons: The Great American Capitalists, 1861-1901 (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1934), 19.

  Drew Theological Sweet, Methodism, 318.

  publishing concern Ibid., 323.

  19 Bishop Asbury Frank Bateman Stanger, ed., The Methodist Trail in New Jersey: One Hundred and Twenty-Five Years of Methodism in the New Jersey Annual Conference, 1863-1961 (Camden, NJ: Annual Conference of the Methodist Church, 1961).

  early days See Wilson 1, 25-30.

  "grace at each meal" Ibid., 30.

  entertainment Ibid., 75.

  "profoundly pro-Southern" Graham Russell Hodges, Slavery and Freedom in the Rural North: African Americans in Monmouth County, New Jersey, 1665-1865 (Madison, WI: Madison House Publishers, 1997), 188-9.

  20 "The depot is crowded" New York Times, July 13, 1870.

  opening day See New York Times, July 13, 1870.

  "The truth is" Ibid., July 13, 1870.

  "I cannot thi

  nk" Wilson 1, 80.

  21 "having our clothes torn" Bradley history.

  "I think we have enough" Ibid.

  22 "money making was secondary" Bradley bio.

  23 "landscape as theology" Glenn Uminowicz, "Sport in a Middle-Class Utopia: Asbury Park, New Jersey, 1871-1895," Journal of Sport History 11, no. 1 (Spring 1984): 61.

  an incident took place See Bradley history.

  24 We know that later Asbury Park Journal, December 10, 1887.

  FOURTH OF JULY, 1885

  26 "The growth of towns" Shore Press, April 23, 1885.

  grown into a resort See Kobbe', New Jersey Coast, and Helen-Chantal Pike, Images of America: Asbury Park (Portsmouth, NH: Arcadia Publishing, 1997).

  27 "drainage" Bradley History.

  1883 season Wilson 2, 487-512.

  boardwalk Ibid., 546.

  Steinbachs Pike, Images, 23, 38-39.

  28 "package railway" Shore Press, June 20, 1885.

  "The tonic saltwater" Wilson 2, 535.

  nine-piece John T. Cunningham, The New Jersey Shore (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1958), 140.

  short story "The Reluctant Voyagers" by Stephen Crane (from Harper's

  magazine, circa 1893) Thomas A. Gullason, ed., The Complete Short Stories and Sketches of Stephen Crane (New York: Doubleday, 1963), 121-39.

  "The surf lubricates" Wilson 2, 533-34.

  "cut so low" New York Times, July 12, 1886, 5.

  29 Modesty Ibid., June 7, 1921, 17.

  "Jesus" Ibid., June 12, 1886, 5.

  junk See Bradley bio.

  "skyscraping" See Bradley obit.

  30
"Not a person to be easily understood" See Bradley bio.

  enormous contradictions Asbury Park Press, December 24, 1887, and Daily Journal, July 13, 1889.

  immigrants Burrows and Wallace, Gotham, 970.

  "I give it as my opinion" Shore Press, April 23, 1885.

  Golden Road T. J. McMahon, The Golden Age of the Monmouth Shore:

  1864-1914 (Fairhaven, NJ: T. J. McMahon Publishing, 1964), 21.

  iron pier Ibid., 23.

  31 "Satan" Daily Journal, August 8, 1889.

  "hypocritical cloak" New York Times, July 12, 1886.

  "In spite of" Daily Journal, August 31, 1889.

  a contemporary account New York Times, July 12, 1886.

  The Artesian and local judge Ibid., December 12, 1886, 10.

  illegal saloons Ibid., July 12, 1886.

  32 "excursion houses" Cunningham, New Jersey Shore, 144.

  diversions See Daily Journal, "Pleasure Guide," 1885.

  rink Shore Press, June 11, 1885.

  Epicycloidal Wheel Wilson 1, 65.

  33 unpaved streets See "West Side Story: Profile of a Black Community,"

  special report, Asbury Park Press, May 21, 1982. Hereafter, "West Side Story."

  Burnham Henry C. Pitney Jr., supervising ed., A History of Morris County, New Jersey, embracing upwards of two centuries, 1710-1913 (New York/Chicago: Lewis Historical Publishing Co, 1914).

  Independence Day Shore Press, July 9, 1885.

  34 "impudent" Daily Journal, July 7, 1885.

  "Too Many Colored People" Ibid., July 17, 1885.

  35 "a big colored picnic" New York Times, July 19, 1885.

  36 drawn from his religion James S. Thomas, Methodism's Racial Dilemma:

  The Story of Central Jurisdiction (New York: Abingdon Press, 1992), 13.

  African-American congregants Ibid., 28-29.