Island Heights History

Victorian Island Heights

This area of our Island Heights is the most intact example of a planned Victorian religious resort in Ocean county.  With the extension of the Pennsylvania Railroad’s Camden to Seaside Park line stopping first in Island Heights in 1883, the newly mobile middle class now had access to this Christian family resort, as well as, the Jersey seashore towns.  In 1877, the Rev Jacob Graw presiding elder of the New Brunswick district of the Methodist Church thought Island Heights to be the perfect location for a camp meeting summer resort.  On July 1878, he, along with all members of the New Jersey conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church and 17 prominent business men from surrounding towns, became incorporators of the Island Heights Association, a Methodist organization designed to hold camp meetings.  Dr. Graw undertook to establish a Christian family resort formed under temperance influences.  They staked out and cleared a 10 acre plot on the bluffs for the camp meeting grounds and the first camp meeting was held in august of 1878 under the direction of Rev. Samuel Van Sant when over 1500 people came by horse and buggy and chartered boat.  The association built docks, roads and auditorium and RR station and trestle for the extension of the Pennsylvania RR. Plots of land and cottages around the camp meeting area were sold each year. The cottage at 102 Simpson was built around this time as a summer cottage for a well-off Pennsylvania camp meeting goer.

In 1887 Island Heights became a borough including all the property acquired by the association.

Our summer cottage is a scaled down version of a typical middle class Victorian home. Primarily missing an entry hall, library, servants quarters, and  cold storage room.