Why Nobody Wants to Visit Asbury Park

The full history of Asbury Park, New Jersey — from James Bradley's temperance resort in 1871 to the Convention Hall that still stands over the Atlantic. How a mile of boardwalk became the most famous ruin on the Jersey Shore. The segregated West Side and Springwood Avenue's lost jazz scene. The Morro Castle disaster of 1934. The 1970 riots that burned what the railroad tracks had divided. The Stone Pony, Bruce Springsteen, and the Asbury Park sound that kept the city's name alive while everything behind it collapsed. Deinstitutionalization, the Garden State Parkway, suburban malls, failed redevelopment deals, and the LGBTQ community that quietly bought the Victorians nobody else wanted. Two cities inside one square mile, from the first day to now. Sources: Daniel Wolff, 4th of July, Asbury Park: A History of the Promised Land (Bloomsbury, 2005) Thomas Gallagher, Fire at Sea: The Mysterious Tragedy of the Morro Castle (Rinehart & Company, 1959) Helen-Chantal Pike, Asbury Park's Glory Days: The Story of an American Resort (Rutgers University Press, 2005) Charlie Horner and Michael Stephen Smith, Beyond the Palace (Plexus Publishing, 2003) "Asbury Park Board of Education Raided in Corruption Inquiry," The New York Times, March 2007 Asbury Park Press archival reporting, 1930–2013