Monmouth Beach Clubhouse Hotel Images …
Monmouth Beach’s Top Hat …
It’s the spot where Monmouth Beach all began. Eliakim Wardell, a Boston-born Quaker who first settled this shore area, broke ground on a farmhouse near today’s Beach Road, River Avenue and Club Circle. Settling safely between ocean and river — probably in 1668.
Later on in the late 1800s Wardell’s “sea-view farm” would become a “vacation place of notables” and “one of the most popular hotels on the Jersey coast.” The rich and famous guests who would stay there frequently earned mention in New York City newspaper society pages.
It may even have been an early “Summer White House.” According to press accounts, at least two American Presidents (Benjamin Harrison and William McKinley) stayed there. Back then the place shinned: “Monmouth Beach is an aristocratic colony of aristocratic cottages inhabited by aristocratic people,” according to a 1878 New York Times report when the hotel was at its peak.
And, Monmouth Beach: 19th Land of the Rich & Famous — HERE
The facility went by several names over the years (the Monmouth Beach Clubhouse Hotel, the Monmouth Beach Country Club, and the Monmouth Beach Inn) while offering the best in fashionable shore living (accommodations included tennis, golf, music, dancing, bowling, swimming, sailing, fine dining, sleeping, croquet and horseback riding).
Just as the Roaring 20s were concluding and the Great Depression neared, the facility was mostly consumed in a great fire. Only a small section remains today. Following are some images I’ve located — and I’m always looking for more. Here’s my e-mail.

MB Clubhouse Hotel (l) and John Torrey, Jr. house (r) on Beach Road, 1910. Torrey was managing partner of the Monmouth Beach Association — a group of wealthy investors that shaped the town into an exclusive resort starting in the early 1870s.

“Monmouth Beach Club House,” 1870s (G.W. Pach Photo). As it appeared prior to remodeling by the Monmouth Beach Association which first acquired the property in Spring 1871.

Grand old Monmouth Beach — From Ocean Avenue looking up Beach Road at the Clubhouse Hotel (l) and Casino (r), 1910s.

One of the final sections of the original hotel left standing — a private home at 17 Beach Road, 2010s.

Letter from Vice President Garret Hobart confirming his membership in the MB Country Club, June 1899.

View from Clubhouse Hotel roof looking east, late 1910s. Note the five seashore mansions still standing on the east side of Ocean Avenue north of the MB Club.
“Monmouth Beach Inn” profile from a 1911 brochure. (Dawn Rise Images).