While Coney Island was known for entertaining the masses with its
amusements and oddities, further east lie two areas that once catered to
a more genteel and refined population. Beginning in the 1870s, two
prominent men would develop their respective properties,
,
creating lavish and grandiose hotels for the city's upper middle class
and wealthy elite. At the time, these areas were premiere resort
destinations; today they are a distant memory, demolished just a few
decades after they were built. Looking at present day Manhattan and
Brighton Beaches, communities that are quite distinct from one another,
it is difficult to envision their past—which makes it all the more
interesting.
An unfortunate circumstance first brought Manhattan Beach's creator,
investor and railroad tycoon Austin Corbin, to the area. Under doctor's
orders to spend the summer at the seaside for his young son's health,
Corbin was a guest at the Ocean Hotel owned by William Engelman, a man
who made his fortune selling horses to the government during the Civil
War. While there, Corbin set his sights on the uninhabited swampland
east of Engelman's property, realizing its potential as a resort
destination. He chose the name "Manhattan Beach" in the hope that its
cosmopolitan flavor would attract a clientele of the same ilk. Also
recognizing that the remote location required transportation access, he
used his power as president of the Long Island Railroad to construct the
New York and Manhattan Beach Railway, bringing the shore within one
hour of uptown New York.
[The Manhattan Beach Hotel, via the Museum of the City of New York.]
The Manhattan Beach Hotel opened for business in the summer of 1877.
Built by architect J. Pickering Putnam, the four-story Queen Anne-style
wooden hotel was
nearly 700 feet long, featuring distinctive
turrets and covered verandas with neatly manicured grounds surrounding
the hotel and facing the boardwalk. The hotel had a grand reputation
from the moment it opened—former president Ulysses S. Grant presided
over its open ceremony on July 4 of that year. The
Brooklyn Daily
Eagle called it "the best hotel on the Atlantic Ocean." It would have
been difficult to disagree: the hotel featured 150 guest rooms as well
as an assortment of restaurants, ballrooms, and shops and offered first
class entertainment—John Philip Sousa performed here and wrote the
musical piece "The Manhattan Beach March" in the hotel's honor in 1893.
In addition, exclusive New York clubs such as the University Club, the
Union League, the New York Club and the Coney Island Jockey Club used
the resort as their summer headquarters. Based on the success of his
first hotel, Corbin would build another three years later—the
Oriental Hotel.
An opulent hotel with a Moorish motif, this hotel catered to the
wealthiest of families, offering them suites for extended stays
throughout the entire resort season.
[Hotel Brighton via MCNY.]
Not to be overshadowed by his neighbor, Engelman also decided to
create a resort. He named it Brighton Beach after the idyllic British
seashore destination and built the
Hotel Brighton (later the
Brighton Beach Hotel) in 1878. Also made of wood, the hotel was 460 feet
long and several stories high, with accommodations for
upwards of 5,000 guests.
However, ten years later, the beach in front of the hotel would become
so badly eroded that the ocean waves would lap up against the hotel's
façade. To save it from destruction, the hotel was placed atop 120
railcars and moved inland 500 to 600 feet. This massive job only took
three months to complete, meaning the hotel was open for business again
in the summer of 1888. Engelman failed to lure Corbin's wealthier
clientele, however, because they did not wish to be any closer to Coney
Island.
[Moving the Brighton Beach Hotel, via the NYPL.]
All three resorts catered to the sensibilities and interests of the
refined Victorian era. Guests enjoyed evenings filled with concerts and
elaborate firework displays. Horse racing, an immensely popular pastime,
was first introduced in the area when Engelman opened a track in
Brighton Beach in 1879. In subsequent years, other tracks would open up
nearby, making the area the
race track capital of the country.
And as salt water bathing became more popular, the resorts built
bathhouses to serve its guests. By 1880, the Manhattan Beach Hotel
offered
2,350 single bathhouses and 350 larger rooms for groups
of a half-dozen bathers. These accommodations and amenities made these
resorts a destination, attracting patrons away from the resorts they
would normally frequent in places like Newport, Rhode Island, and Long
Branch, New Jersey.
[The Oriental Hotel, via the NYPL.]
Yet despite the success of these hotels, they were relatively
short-lived. Many factors contributed to the decline of the resort area:
the amusement parks opening in West Brighton, the suburbanization of
parts of Brooklyn, and the Manhattan Beach Improvement Company selling
off parcels of land for residential development. But what truly
destroyed these areas was the prohibition of gambling, forcing the once
very lucrative horse tracks to close, thus causing many patrons to stop
coming to these resorts. Between 1910 and 1920, both the Manhattan Beach
(1911-2) and Oriental Hotels (1916) were torn down and the land was
sold for residential development. Although once considered a negative,
the Brighton Beach Hotel's close proximity to Coney Island, which was at
its peak during this time, meant that the Brighton Beach Hotel fared a
bit better—it stood until 1926. Although these hotels were gone, the
area remained popular for its Manhattan Beach Baths, a bungalow and
bathhouse community with daily concerts and dance. The baths closed in
1942, marking the end of Manhattan and Brighton beaches as resort
destinations.
Today the communities of Manhattan and Brighton beaches, once fairly
similar, are now two distinct areas with seemingly no trace of their
early past. Brighton Beach is predominantly a Russian immigrant enclave,
comprised of small bungalows and a recent proliferation of
non-contextual development, in stark opposition to the private and
palatial homes that grace the streets of Manhattan Beach. Despite these
changes, one unifying link remains—the boardwalk. Although so much has
changed for these areas, the boardwalk still stands, offering
uninterrupted views of the gulls, seabirds, sand, and ocean, surely as
much of a welcome respite today as it would have been in the nineteenth
century.
—
Lisa Santoro
Further Reading:
·
The Coney Island History Web Site [westland.net]
·
An Imperfect Paradise in Brooklyn [BPL]
·
Brighton and Manhattan Beach, at your leisure [The Bowery Boys]
·
The Encyclopedia of New York City
·
Curbed Classics archive [Curbed]
